To Tread Amongst the Gods
by The Idiot in a Tree
Summary: A slave resigned to his fate as a captive and a commodity is given a new start in an old conflict, and decides to take his life in his own hands in a dying world. [EDIT]- Folks, I don't edit this crap. I don't even take a third look at it. Want to beta-read? Send me a PM. Otherwise I'll continue putting out the same stuff. Expecting 9 chapters, intending to finish ASAP.
1. Chapter 1

It's been a while since I've seen something other than the inside of a space-ship. I guess an orbital station doesn't technically count as a space-ship, but I lump that in with the same category. Cold metal, reinforced glass, and the endless void beyond. Sure, the view is sometimes graced with a planet, or in the case of the base of operations of the ship I'm on, an asteroid field caught in the gravity of a dense planetoid, but the void beyond isn't any less real for the beauty juxtapoised over it.

The ship I'm on isn't exactly a sight for sore eyes, either. The designers didn't account much aesthetic beauty to the cargo hold of the ship. And considering I'm a slave, well…  
You could say I don't really like the view of whatever beauty could be derived from the chromalloy plating and purple paint, interrupted infrequently by burn marks, hull patches, and exposed wiring or control panels.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not upset that I was one of the luckier people on the small colony world I used to say was home who was taken as a slave instead of being killed outright by the mantis Culling Ships. I watched a lot of my friends and family die that day, almost two years ago. I don't think about it often, but when something reminds me of that time, I shiver a little bit and am grateful to at least be alive, even if I am a slave.

I forfeited my freedom in favor of my life. I've been on slave ships or stations since then. Slaves don't usually stay in the system that long. Two-ish years is a long time to be a slave and not be sold. I've never seen my captors kill one of us needlessly, though. I'm not worried about my life being taken now. The only way I'd die is if another slave killed me in personal combat, back at the base station, or if this ship is destroyed. I suppose I could also be freed and killed for some sort of sadistic fun, if somebody had the scrap to spare for my life, but I doubt anybody actually does that. Slaves aren't that cheap.

I do well in the arena, too. Fatalities don't happen often, either, but I've never lost. I've done well for myself, fighting it out with other slaves. Granted, I've never had the poor fortune of going up against any mantis slaves, but I've even taken on a rockman slave and gotten off with the upper hand. I've got some scars, like when Cannibal Dan pulled a blade on me and carved me up a bit, or when Yorida the zoltan put a half-days charge straight through me. Both times, my masters dragged me to the station's Med-Bay to fix me up a bit. I loved it in there, the diagnosis virtual intelligence doesn't go easy on the anesthetics. And besides, it alleviated all the problems I got during the fight, and then some I had gotten just from my time in captivity. Of course, I wasn't allowed the linger long in the fuzzy, drug-induced warmth of the Med-Bay for long, but my captors provided me with the promised reward of extra rations for besting my foes.  
Over time the combination of experience in the arena and extra food from the victories therein caused me to grow in a few ways: I gained more muscle than my peers, became much quieter than my peers, and stored away a few hand-to-hand fighting tricks to use on my peers, and maybe, someday, my captors. I was used by them to unload cargo and scrap, which helped me grow even stronger. The other slaves, both those from my home who knew me before captivity, while I remained in contact with them, and the newer slaves who didn't know me, learned to fear me for my prowess in the arena. Not that the slaves had much to say in the beginning, but I spoke very little and was replied to even less. Sometimes I feel a little bit lonely, being the slave that nobody speaks to, but I've never been part of any altercations, either in the holding areas at base station, or in the cargo-hold-turned-bunk-room on the slave ships.

Usually, the slave ships have about 8 bunks, although I was on a ship once that had 14, in rows along the cargo holds length, with scrap taking up the rest of the room that the bunks leave empty. The slave ships have additional cargo holds, to keep weapons and food away from us, but since we don't have any tools that can utilize the raw components of scrap, our slaver captors don't see any need to fill the other holds when the scrap can take up the rest of the room just fine. For slavers, they're generally courteous and kind, allowing us ample trips to the head (guarded and supervised, of course), and a lot of them have no qualms with talking and chatting with the slaves when there's downtime during a jump, or waiting for a potential client to consider a purchase. They've even taken me and some of their other slaves to see other areas of the ship like the engines, the weapons, or the helm. Some of the assorted slaves are taken back to quarters, depending on what the slaver is into and if the slaves agree. They might be involved in a life of crime, but the syndicate that all of the captains serve with is humane and do not allow rape or anything that isn't consensual. Still, some of the captains even were interested in slaves that one would not have deemed possible to see in that light. One particularly efficient human captainess herself asked the company of a rockman, who appeased her without a word. As far as I know, the interspecies relationships in space are not as friendly, which makes it all the stranger when these sort of interactions surface. There must be something about the slaver or the slave life that changes you.  
I talk with the guards a lot. I've never been approached by a captain, or any crew, for that matter, being a younger man, and most of the captains and crews I've served under have been hetereosexual men. I do get to spend a lot of time, comparatively, outside of the hold. Some of the crew who aren't guards, engineers and technicians, have given me a look around their work stations and even a few tips on how to run a ship. I wish I had been to the helm, although I've never actually seen the helm of any of the ships I've been on. I know slaves have been taken up there, but never I. When I was younger I fantasized being a ship captain, voyaging amongst the stars. When I was aquired by the slavers, I got a little closer, in a strange, grotesque way, to that dream, but I still have yet to realize it fully.  
I woke amidst another dream that I was a captain, of my own ship, to the normal reality that I was still a slave, and not on my own ship. On another slave run, hopefully to get myself sold off somehow. I looked around the hold at the prisoners I called roommates.  
5 bunks, including mine, were full. No different from when I had fallen asleep. The two women, a human and a zoltan, were the first to go. Women usually are. The engi next to me was still in sleep mode, as it was when it set itself down on the bunk to my right. I was in the corner, on the right aisle. On the left, a mantis, human, and rockman occupied the bunks opposite us. The slug who was the eighth slave was the first to go after the women, I presume due to his telepathic abilities, but I'll never be sure.  
I sat up and asked the guard who I knew was listening on the other side of the doors if I could be escorted to the head. Within ten seconds, the door slid open and I raised my hands above my head to leave the room. We had been aspace for only a few days, but even if I was close with these guards, we all still play by the rules of slave and slaver.

The head had all the facilities required for a full cleaning for most species, save maybe the tough mineral growths that rockmen develop sometimes and the thick mucous that slugs secrete. A sonospray shower and cleaning for the body, and a vibratizing once-over for my teeth left me feeling clean and ready for another day to be not sold, as my luck went. Maybe if I stayed long enough in their inventory, the slavers would just recruit me to their crew.  
I doubt it, but it beats thinking about being jettisoned since I've never even been asked about.

Back in the bunk room, the guard had set a ration pack on my bunk for me. They knew that most slaves took in nutrients after they woke, and so they dropped cables for the energy-reliant species, or left rations for the species that ate. I wolfed down my rations, both the palatable solid section and the less-appealing liquid section. I could have started a second if it had been offered, but since it hadn't been, I left the packaging in the waste basket by the door and lay down.  
Our bunks are all outfitted with entertainment suites, to keep slaves pacified, and I whispered to the VI in my headrest to start a program on FTL drive theory. I had heard it before, but I was interested by the science and personality of the narrator, so I listen to it again, from time to time. I settled in for another play-through.  
About a third of the way through the program, the lights in the hold dimmed briefly and flashed, and the VI shut down and stopped. The unmistakable drone of the shields changed tones from the passive shields that are normally kept on at all times to prevent space debris from damaging the ship, to the higher pitched whine of active combat shields, designed to mitigate damage from ship-mounted weaponry.  
And after a few moments, the shields song was punctuated by the unmistakable roar of weapons firing- and projectiles impacting the hull.  
So we were in combat, again. This has happened before, and while I don't like them, I find myself rooting for my captors. A klaxxon sounding in the hallway called the guards away to battle stations, and we slaves were left in the hull to ponder our fates.

I sighed and let my thoughts wander. Another period of combat we would triumph from, and life would go on. Nothing to do, but to ride it out.

The exchange hadn't been going as normal. I could hear the ship taking more hits than she normally does. For a while, I heard the FTL drive spooling, getting ready to jump, but an impact silenced that quickly enough. They must have disabled our engines and killed the engineer assigned to them, because we weren't jumping, and by now the captain should have jumped out of the system to prevent losses. True, we wouldn't know what's waiting for us at the next beacon, but we know the ship that is currently wrecking us isn't going to stop. At least the next ship we meet might be friendly, if we could jump.

But it doesn't seem likely at this point.  
The guards have long since left us in the hold, doors locked, with the threat that if we killed each other, the survivor would be blasted out the airlocks. We occasionally heard yelling and the sound of personal weapons, but the slaves in the hold couldn't react to the battle at all. I assume we've been boarded, but I don't know for sure. I've heard rumors of electronic warfare suites that could turn your own ship against you, and psychological devices that can drive a loyal crew feral. Whatever was going on, I just hoped the 'enemy' wouldn't destroy the ship before they checked for survivors. Assuming I survive the battle.  
Time passes slowly, when you're waiting for that final impact before you die. I don't know how extensive the damage is on the rest of the ship, but the area I'm in hasn't been touched. Still, I wouldn't know if we were just holding on by a thread, or if we were certainly victorious, and just shooting the cripples. The only definite conclusion would be one of two endings: Silence that falls, but the ship remaining intact, or one last jarring detonation as a key structure someone along the bow of the ship gives out, and the ship ruptures violently, killing all of us if we're lucky, and letting us drift endlessly into space without oxygen if we're not.

One can hold one's breath for only so long, both while waiting to die, and while waiting for the verdict to be passed down. The initial shock and adrenaline rush that the beginning of the conflict sparked died quickly, and now each shot causes the heart to skip a beat, but I find myself wondering how long it's been and how I'm going to amuse myself if it goes on much longer. The other slaves are as I am, on our bunks, but very much awake in the dimmed lights. Even the engi next to me has re-activated and is monitoring the situation carefully. The mantis chitters softly when the battle intensifies, an evolutionary leftover that signifies the continuing presence of his hive-mentality. The other man and the rockman are silent.

We all felt the ship's momentum change as the pilot and engineer(while he was active, or alive) worked together to avoid incoming fire. Though there's planet below us to give us a reference point, we felt the relative speed we were traveling at increase and decrease violently. Sometimes the maneuvering was successful, because of the lack of an impact. Sometimes, it was followed or even stopped by one. Piloting, from what I've learned about it, is a bit of a chance game. You're trying to outsmart the other guy's targeting computers, which is a hit-or-miss business. Literally.  
The beginning of the conflict had started so suddenly, and now, it was almost monotonous. We fired regularly, they returned the offer, and so it went, all the while to the crackle and snap of the shields straining to keep everything out of our little bubble of safe space.

And then, everything stopped. There was no jarring impact, no smiling guard. No fiery end.  
Not immediately, anyway.

Our guns stopped, and a few final impacts sounded. One major one hit very near to us, maybe even on the hull that was our wall. I assume it was close, because I can hear the atmosphere hissing away. A hull breach!  
I thought quickly. The doors hadn't been opened. We were going to be suffocated, or asphyxiated, or smothered, or whatever term the coroner is going to use on us! I turned my eyes around the hold to find any hope of survival.  
The other slaves were still on their bunks. They heard the hissing too. They resigned to die. I wasn't going to let myself go so easily.  
I turned my gaze to the walls. There was a vent just above shoulder level, and I got up to examine it more closely. There isn't much space in it, but it looks to continue, and I felt a faint air current, which means there's probably still air wherever it leads. I grabbed the nearest big piece of scrap off the floor, a pipe length about a foot and a half in diameter, and maybe 12 feet long. I rammed it into the grating over the vent twice before a satisfying ping signified the end of it's structural integrity. Had any guards been alive, they would have stopped me in an instant. But they were dead.

The air is getting thin. I'm beginning to feel light-headed. The hold isn't safe anymore. I thrust the pipe aside and boosted myself off the nearest bunk, into the vent.  
My mind returned to me as I gulped down the precious air rushing past me. It smelled bad, like dust, and electrical smoke, but it was air nonetheless. I lay where I was, my feet still in the hold, breathing for a moment, before I began dragging myself forward on my elbows and knees. I pushed myself for a few feet before I had to stop and take another breather.  
I listened to the sounds of the ship around me. The sigh of the artificial breeze around me, and a dull roar ahead of me. A fire, which would explain the wisps of smoke rushing past me as well as the greasy taste in the air. Still, I'll take burning to death over suffocating, and there's a possibility the fire is contained, or I can get out of it in time to maybe hail the ship that attacked us.

I pulled myself along again. My elbows and knees protested, but survival instincts kicked in and I kept pulling along the line. I rounded a corner, to the right, and then to the left, and from there I got a view of the vent to the next room. I paused again.

Another sound. A voluminous hiss, not like the fire or a hull breach. It was erratic too, changing in pitch slightly, and volume, as though the source was moving around in the room ahead. Curiosity jump started me again and I continued pushing.

As I neared the vent I realized I didn't have much of a plan of getting through the grating, but that problem solved itself. The area immediately around the vent was coated in ash and the vent itself was scorched. Testing a cautious tap to determine if it was still hot, I pressed one finger against it. Warm, uncomfortably so, but not hot. I rested for a moment and tried to look through the cracks in the grating, but the smoke was affecting my eyes so heavily that I could only make out blurs and dull shadows. I clawed out with my hands to see how much give the vent might have, but at the slightest pressure the grating fell forward and clattered onto the deck. I stretched my arms out into the room and pulled myself out so my head just cleared the vent.  
Two figures in armored exo-suits stared at me. One was crouching over some debris and the other was holding a cannister of what looked like fire suppressant. Their suits were scarred by combat, but still quite functional and the wearers seemed to be plenty fit to take me as I was, wedged in a vent. The gleam of weapons strapped to the chest and waist of both figures aside, I wasn't really in a place to argue, being a slave. Very likely, these were members of a rival syndicate, come to increase their profit margin.

The crouching figure was an engi. It chittered to itself, exchanged a few words I didn't catch with it's man companion, and continued. The man looked at me, at the engi, and then back at me again. He set the fire extinguisher down and sauntered over to me. The blaze he had presumably just put out still hung in the air, and I began wheezing and coughing. Still, the air in this room was better than the vacuum of the last, no matter who these fellows in the grey and orange suits are.

"Put your arms out, and I'll pull your through." I did as commanded, even as I fought the black wisps of quenched flame. He gave me a smooth pull and I clattered onto the deck, and rolled over. He stood over me.  
"Can't believe you survived, son. We figured you all would die when we accidentally breached the hull."

I wanted to reply but I hadn't gotten my lungs under control quite yet, so I just wheezed and nodded.

"You got a name?"

I swallowed a cough and rasped out "Bryon" but exerted myself too much and fell back into a fit.  
"Well, you're a lucky man, Bryon. Thank whatever god you believe in, but everything else that was in this system before we jumped in is dead now. That makes you a free man." He extended a hand to pull me up off the deck.

I took it and rose, although I doubled over and breathed a raggedly, but managed to ask "Who are you folks?"

He pointed at the engi "That's Tomas. I'm Diedrick."

I pointed at his chest and the logo, or seal that was emblazoned on one of the armor plates there. "I mean, who are you working for? I don't think I've ever seen that uniform before." I managed to utter quickly and without a cough.

He looked down and then looked back up at me. "You've never seen a Federation soldier before?" He looked a little incredulous.

"No, where- where I'm from, we di-didn't have much conta-acht with spacers." I put my hand over my mouth and cleared my throat.

"Oh. Well, we used to be the legal government stemming from Terra, spread out into the stars. But a rebellion movement has caused significant turmoil and now the Federation is a shadow of what it used to be. The ship I'm on is on the run from the rebels with some significant intelligence that could possibly turn the tide, if we make it to the end."

"Sounds exciting. What'd you attack this ship for? If it's that vital, you should have just jumped away instead of hailing them."

"They hailed us. They demanded one of our crewmen. We declined. There's only five of us to operate the ship as it is, and plus, we're all Federation soldiers just trying to serve our government, we would never betray each other like that. So they fired on us when we refused, and we attacked back." He gestured at the ship around him, still smoking from the battle. "We disabled the weapons on this boat before we sent a team over to see if we could eliminate the slavers and free you folks. We didn't mean to pierce the hull and kill all- all but one of you."

"Oh. What happens now?"

"That depends. We can drop you off at the nearest station and let you try your hand in space. We can take you home, if it's in the direction we're going. Or-" He paused and looked me up and down for a moment before he continued. "Or you can sign on with the Federation and cast your lot in with us." He took a step back to beckon at the viewport to space outside, which showed the hull of the adjacent ship. The Federation ship.

"I'll side with you guys." He thrust out his hand and I took it, pumped once, and he snapped to a salute.

"Welcome to the Federation, private Bryon." I saluted him.

Once on the ship, I was given a uniform and shown the ship. We finished stripping the slaver vessel of useful scrap, and I was brought to the bridge to be formally sworn into the Federation Space Navy and Armed Forces. My voice read the words that scrolled down a wall in front of me before Captain Diedrick.

"I, Bryon Murphy, do solemnly swear upon my life as a human man to support the Federation Space Navy and Armed Forces to the best of my ability, both in war, and in peace. In glory, and in disgrace. In life, and in death. I pledge to carry out my duties as assigned with the courage required of Federation Soldier, knowing the lives of innocent beings rely on my dedication and strength. I will be a beacon of hope in dim space, and the scales of justice on the fields of war. I will not yield to the tempetings of hate and the ease of prejudice. All beings are equal to the Federation. And, above all, I will, if asked, give my life in the line of duty, for my comrades, for my command, and for the common being of the Federation."

The crew assembled on the bridge saluted me as I fell in line with them. Captain Diedrick simply stated, "Battle stations. Time to jump." We rushed to our places, mine being in the sensor suite to pick targets and monitor enemy activity, and awaited the jarring ring of the FTL drive engaging.

And my heart has never beat faster.


	2. Chapter 2

The shudder of the jump faded as the stars re-aligned to stable points of life, rather than the spears of brilliant luminescence streaking by my view-port as they are when we jump. The jump is still beautiful, but after your tenth, or twentieth, or hundredth jump, it becomes the average. Even as a new freeman, you go through a period of appreciation, but it's been enough jumps for that childlike fascination to fade.

I've been working in the sensor suite since Captain Diedrick recruited me. I've had my fair share of the action, too. I've put out a few fires, whose burns still scar the rooms they affected. I've fixed a hull breach, too. Tomas, the engi, jumped in at the last second before the last of the oxygen drained from the room. With his help, I got the hull to at least hold air. I've even gotten a few baubles to brighten my workstation from the rest-stops we've taken.

We were jumping ahead to a normal beacon- in the immediate seconds after the jump, sensors returned negative on any environmental hazards: asteroids, stellar bodies, or energy storms. We had jumped into a few of each, and none are particularly fun. We have the shields to compensate for an asteroid field, and the five of us crew onboard are enough to respond to any fires that start, but there is just no getting past the constant shudder of the shields struggling to protect us, or the shrill whine of a pulsar passing over us, and the power system shunting off the ionic energy.

This beacon didn't have a distress signal active, either. Those show up before you jump from the previous beacon, and we would know by now if anybody here needed help.

The near-range scanners sent out the radar pulse automatically when we arrived, but the onboard computers filter the results that I see to help keep false-positives down. There's a lot of debris just floating in space, and if there weren't filters, my radar would be full of objects about the size and shape of a ship. The radar returned 5 really good positives, four of which I discounted immediately. All four were ships, but in various states of destruction and decay. Two engi vessels, both with significant hull damage, a mantis vessel, pristine except for the lack of crew, and no power signature, and a large rockman vessel that was actually in two pieces, just close enough to each other to appear as one ship. The purposes of each ship was impossible to divine, and the time they spent here, while impossible to guess accurately, was not a small amount of time. Except in the case of reactor meltdown, a ship's FTL drive can carry thermal energy for weeks or even months after the ship has been disabled.

The fifth lock, for example, still had some lingering thermal energy. I focussed a tighter beam scan on the ship in question. Radar profile similar to a Rebel frigate, not a surprise, so far from Federation space. No hull damage, it seemed. Significant thermal profile, these guys must still be afloat. I pulled the intercom microphone to my mouth and hailed the captain.

"Hey chief, we've got a live one." I rattled off some coordinates and figures. "Recommend your input on it?" I pulled up the radar profile on-screen that had a twin feed to a screen up in the cockpit.

"Yeah, she's still running hot. Too hot to be dead. And you can see the thermal spots where her systems are heating the hull. Plus, the ion emission from her shield emitters say to me that her shields are still up." It's uncommon to find a ship disabled with it's shields still up. "Looks like a Rebel ship, alright. But there's not as much weaponry. Not as much as I'd expect, anyway."

"I agree." I'd noticed that but wasn't sure if I should mention it. "Looks like she's been refitted for something. Cargo hold is bigger, by the looks of it."

"Yeah. I'm going to hail them. I bet there's something useful in there."

My pulse quickened. Combat wasn't new to me, but that doesn't change the fact that we're going to try and test our skill against another ship. We haven't yet, but there is the possibility we lose and die.

"Understood, over and out." I put the mouthpiece back into it's slot in the console.

The captain doesn't disclose everything that happens on the bridge with me, but as I assume the Rebels didn't want to share, or rather, that they wanted to share their missiles more than their cargo. A missile lock followed shortly by the missile itself was all the sharing they wanted to do. A thermal spike around their engines meant they were trying to run. Not that they would, the Captain would order weapons fire on the engine room, and disable their FTL capability. We've been around the block with runners a few times before.

My job right now was also to operate the electronic warfare suite. I had a readout of all the ship's computerized systems, and I had to keep an eye out for suspicious code going through. Unless they had launched a hacking drone, which they hadn't, I had a relatively easy time quarantining the attacking codes, and I had enough time to launch my own attack. I always launched a virus into their surveillance suite, which granted me access to their internal cameras. I counted three enemy crew, plus an anti-personnel drone onboard. No teleporter, so they were staying there. I turned my attention to their cargo holds to try and determine the usefulness of whatever they were trying to keep from us.

The hold contained a large amount of sensor equipment and databanks. While the Rebels could be criticized for their violent uprising, they were led by bureaucrats who know how to run a galaxy. This ship is likely a run-of-the-mill census/survey ship. I'd assume it maps the worlds the Rebels control, counts the populations of loyal Rebels, and identifies Federation military outposts and bases for later action. So they weren't running to keep anything physical from us. They were keeping information about the system from us.

Information we could use. Information I wanted. Information I could get.

I began scouting the network of the Rebel ship. A couple internal firewalls, but nothing serious. They didn't have a counter-electronic-warfare station to keep me out, so I began scouring the networked pathways to try and figure out which lines simply ran to the toilet, and which line would run into the data banks that had the scan information. Of course, if I did stumble over the toilet, I'd send it a signal to start flooding the head. I kept an eye on the sensor monitor, too. The captain of the Rebel ship can't be doing well. His ship's weapons, engines, and oxygen system were disabled. His shields were flickering, but not at full strength. We hadn't taken a hit yet.

There! I found the connection labelled [EXTERNAL DATA STORAGE DEVICE (D:)] and accessed it. One glance at the files told me everything I had already guessed: Text files in orderly folders with world names and locations, and population counts inside. System map files, showing hazards in the jumps ahead of us, distress markers showing where to direct Rebel ships from the next base the surveyor would stop at. Everything we needed to get to the next system in one piece! I started two simultaneous programs: A virus in other systems to mask my intentions, and a download-cascade program designed to transfer more data the longer it runs. The problem is, if the cascader doesn't finish, the data will be compromised completely and utterly unusable.

I pulled the intercom again. "Captain, can you hold off on them? I'm trying to-"

"I can't, son. They're repairing their weapons and will fire on us if we don't destroy them in the next volley."

I looked at the progress bar on my viral monitor. It was gaining speed, but whether it was fast enough, I couldn't tell. Only thing to do now is wait.

I turned my attention back to the radar read. Sure enough, the missile launcher on the enemy ship had been repaired and was seeking a lock on us. Before it could get a good read, our own weapons fired. A triple-burst of anti-ship laser weapons slammed through the shields, and the ship's reactor detonated. Too much, too soon. The ship split into about seven pieces, and separated from each other. I turned my attention to the download.

It had finished! I had all the details the Rebels had about this sector! I got up from my seat to tell the captain.

I passed through Ship Security and an airlock room to stand on the bridge behind his control chair. "Captain, I-"

He turned his chair around to look at me with an expectant look. "Why aren't you in sensors? We need to to help us salvage this wreck." He gestured at the radar readout he had. "Since we had to destroy them, we won't know what their cargo was." He began to turn back around.

"Actually, sir, I hacked their cameras and saw what it was. They were a surveyor, and I pulled the scans they had taken. I'll upload them to the sector map, but we got it all."

He turned back around to face me. "Excellent work, son! So this wasn't a total loss. Want to try your hand at space-work? There's still salvaging to do."

I shrugged my shoulders. "Sure, I'll give it a shot."

"Meet Stick in the Medbay and suit up. Dismissed." He turned back around, and I started making my way to meet Stick.

I haven't really gotten to know the crew. The bunkroom has only 2 bunks, and the captain has his own cabin near the helm. I'm on the same sleep shift as the engi, and he doesn't say anything while we try and fall asleep. The other two crew are a zoltan and a human, but I don't really know either. I had seen them when I had been sworn in, but they had been in formation and in Dress Greys. There wasn't any talking then, and there was almost no cause for us to do so now. We all received our rations through a materials dispersal system that ran through the ship. The engi and the zoltan don't use the head, or rather, not like humans do, and I've never seen a line.

I hadn't even received any training, from anyone. I am a member of the United Federation Space Navy, and the captain only had me watch the training materials and read the manual before he was apparently comfortable with my service. I've re-read the manual, and a few of the others that the UFSN Command had published for the training of both Space Navy Personnel, including Ship-to-Ship combat tactics, Boarding and Hand-Combat Tactics, and the Comprehensive Survival Guide to the Galaxy. I keep meaning to talk to the captain about trying my hand in boarding enemy ships, but I never have.

The doors to the Medbay slid open, and Stick was already suited up. Stick was the zoltan, I assumed. He was running some checks on the human suit for me and turned when I walked in.

"Hello, friend. Captain says you'll be joining me out there." He gestured to a screen that gave an exterior view of the hull. "How you feel about space-work?" His accent was difficult to place, but he sounded as though he had learned his Terran from a European. His bass voice was surprisingly voluminous for a being only about 95% of the mass of an average human being. The end syllable of some of his words trailed off with a slight buzzing, as well.

"I think I'll do okay. But I've never been in one of these suits before. Anything I should know?"

He was shorter than I was, I noticed, as I backed into the suit's front and pulled the thick fabric of the legs up so the belt would line up with my waist. "No, nothing. Any question you think up, you ask me over radio." I tested the flexibility of the suit at the joints. A little restricting, but I assume that's fine. I can still move perfectly fine. Stick was walking to the airlock room.

Once there, he opened a locker and pulled out another suit. This suit, as he demonstrated to me, went on over the first. It was thicker, and had hardened pieces for the major joints: shoulders, neck, elbows, waist, knees, and an articulating ankle-boot structure. The helmet system separated in three pieces, and folded open like a flower. Once the exosuit was on, the three petals of visor, left and right head pieces came together. Lastly, I put on a power and environmental systems backpack. Stick checked my seals, and I checked his. He didn't need a powerpack like I do, but he had environmental systems too. Once fully geared, we cycled the airlock and stepped out onto the hull.

The hull had railings, at one time. Not much of them was left. The cosmetic paint was gone, too. The functional alloy and ceramic plates that made up the exterior, however, retained their color. We trekked across the hull, examining it for anything out of the ordinary, whether useful or dangerous, before we instructed the captain to bring us to the debris field.

Salvage work, I almost immediately noticed, is extremely easy. When the enemy ship was destroyed, parts of it and all it carried were scattered, but for the most part stayed in one clump. Useful things like fuel capsules, operational missiles, and crates of scrap are all modular units designed to split apart from the wreck and from one another. Telltale signs of the remains being useless to us clued us in very quickly to what was worth looking at, and what was worthing being ignored. We could technically stay here as long as we want, amongst the wreckage hunks, and package up every piece of scrap we could possibly use, but we have a mission to be on. We took the useful things, a number of crates of scrap, a couple of fuel pods, and one working missile, before the captain recalled us back inside the ship. Stick and I unsuited, and once we had all the new cargo catalogued, we returned to normal operations and made another jump.

The monitors didn't bring up a feed in the next system. I sighed. Nebula. Not only would I not be able to see much of anything in the clouds of gas that must have been the upper layers of a star, but the electromagnetic forces generated by the swirling maelstrom of matter wreaked havoc on the intelligence capabilities of the ship. Frankly, the whole crew could be working on sensor feeds like I was and we wouldn't even be able to maintain view of our own ship, let alone outside of it, or of an enemy. Luckily, radio and laser carrier particles aren't really affected, so we can still communicate over radio comms, and LiDAR targeting is still operable.

But LiDAR didn't turn up any locks. It auto targets viable threats to allow the captain to choose what targets he has as options to be fired on, but there wasn't anything resembling a ship here. There was, however, a station nearby. LiDAR makes trying to decipher writing in the paint or even identification welded to the station impossible due to the lack of resolution. The detail of LiDAR painting isn't very good. I tried to fiddle with the particle count of the beam, and then the sweep speed, but there wasn't any better resolution to be had. LiDAR was, after all, a backup measure.

I sat back in my chair. Undoubtedly the captain would be hailing them right now, but there's no job for me to do.

The door slid open behind me. Without thinking, I swivelled my chair and got up-

-To stare directly down the barrell of a Rebel hand-blaster. "Where do you think you're going?"

Time slowed down. My eyes snapped instant pictures of everything about the man. tousled dark hair, uniform a little bit too big for him, wild eyes. His eyes stared straight at mine. He must have already seen I don't have a weapon in here. Well, not a blaster.

I raised my hands slowly. He lowered his blaster from shoulder to hip, but still kept the barrel trained on me. At this range, with no protection, he'd liquefy me. He stepped close enough for the door he came in through to close.

His boot straps weren't all on. His belt was a notch too loose. He wasn't even wearing combat armor. This guy must have been teleported onto the ship from the station. Apparently, the Rebel station. His uniform was clear, though. He was a Rebel. I learned that much from my spotty training. I don't think the captain knows he's on board, but I don't think he'd approve of him being here. I'll remove him.

"The safety is on." I made a visible effort to look like I relaxed slightly. But I kept my eyes on his. His retinas didn't even shake. It was off.

"No, it's off, buddy." He kept staring. His eyelids closed, and fluttered open with his retina halfway between me and halfway to check the blaster. I exhaled and saw his muscles start to tighten on the trigger.

But I was faster. Time snapped back to normal and I was lunging myself at him. Really, I had just leaned forward, but pressed my body up against his, so that if he could rotate the barrel to fire, I'd be able to wrench it out of his hand easily. Also, as a side effect, the energy would probably splash off me and kill him too, but I don't intend to die.

He didn't try and shoot. He slammed against the door, which didn't open fast enough, but did open and we tumbled out into the unused system room adjacent to Sensors.

I had wrapped my arms around him but now I used them to push myself off the floor and reached down to feel the blaster. I locked my hand over the top of the weapon, thumbed the safety, and pushed as hard as I could to get it out of his hand. He was preoccupied with landing, still, and let go with comparatively little difficulty. I didn't want to give him the chance to get it back, however, so I tossed it behind me, through the door that we fell through, and it closed. I rolled off him and got to my feet, in the combat stance I learned from the arena. He shook his head and got up, a little slower than I. I was confident I could beat him within an inch of his life, so I gave him the benefit of getting up before I started in on him.

He blocked a right hook but didn't block the second, and staggered. Trying my luck, and half evaluating his abilities, I swung a third and he took the full force, slamming into the wall. He clearly wasn't trained for this. I feinted twice with my right and left fists to cover for a full power flat footed kick to his sternum while he was still recovering from both the faked blows and the impact with the wall. He flew backwards, and his head hit the wall low behind him. He slumped over and didn't make a move to get up.

I took a breath, and stood up straight. I took a step towards him, waiting for him to move. He was breathing, but not conscious. I kicked him lightly to ensure that. I decided to check his pockets and kneeled to start rifling through-

When the room around me flashed red and a blaster shot charged the air where my head had just been. Reflex kicked in and I spun, up and towards the shooter, before I even got a good look at him.

Another Rebel, standing just inside the door leading in from Weapons. The doors all around the room, I noticed, were open. I don't remember them opening. But adrenaline makes you focus on the important things when it's going.

This guy, as I flew towards him, I noticed was like the other- ragged, but armed. He was skinnier, and less sure of himself. Explains why he missed. He looked angry, though. His thin face was twisted between a sneer of doing a dirty job and a surprise. I bear-hugged him around the chest as he was still trying to bring the barrel of his blaster down to fire again. He wasn't stanced properly and just crumpled below me. I bounced with him when we hit the wall, in the corner by the door. I recovered first and threw him by the shirt into the middle of the room, away from the doors.

He was trying to get his bearings when I started to charge him again. He fumbled and dropped his blaster, but snapped a combat knife off a sheath strapped to his hip. We tangled, fell to the floor, and his knife clattered away, too. I pushed his chest so he was lying on his back, and then kneeled on his chest and nailed him a few times across the jaw. I wasn't counting. I was looking to see when he'd lose consciousness. He struggled, at first, but then he started to ragdoll and I stopped. He was out. I stood.

I was breathing hard now, but I collected his blaster from where it had fallen. The first hadn't moved. I examined the weapon for a moment, but footsteps caused me to prepare for one more. Although that sounded like more than one.

Captain Diedrick sauntered in and I lowered the weapon back to my prisoners. His hair was a bit messy, and he was visibly sweating, but he seemed to be recovered from whatever he had just been doing. He whistled.

"Sorry chief, but I hope they're not your friends." I started.

He shook his head. "Three others teleported into other rooms. We neutralized them but I was worried about the other two. The last guy we took said there was two more. But it looks like you handled the situation well." He looked at the blaster I held pointed at them. "You can keep anything you found on them. Are they alive?" I nodded, and he sighed. "Well, I guess we'll put them back on that station using our teleporter. Go through their pockets, and I'll have Mara help you drag the blokes to the teleporter room." He walked through the room, to Weapons. The door was closed again, and cycled to allow passage.

The Rebels had a few odds and ends between them, the knife and two blasters, some Rebel currency chips as well as a well Galactic Currency chips. I was just finishing when Mara walked in.

She was gorgeous. Rosy red cheeks, and a wisp of brown hair tumbling down her forehead. Fair complexion, and she greeted me with a surprised smile. "Wow, Cap'n wasn't kidding, you really did get both of 'em."

I hadn't thought of anything to say, so I shrugged and put the things they had into my pockets. "I'll take the bigger one." I walked over to the first. I bent and slung him over my shoulder.

Mara looked at me for a moment but she moved to grab the other guy. Mara isn't as well built, I noticed, and she couldn't pick him up. "I'll come back for him, then." I lugged the first to the teleporter, where the captain was waiting, and set him down. Mara had dragged him by the arms through one room, but I carried him the rest of the way.

"Want to do it one at a time, with one of our guys to go too? I think you'd like to experience the teleporter before we send you on a boarding mission, Bryon."

I just nodded and took my place on the energized pad. I gave Cap'n a thumbs-up and he hit a button on the wall.

Teleporting is like regaining consciousness after being knocked out, except much faster. You don't even have time to topple over. I staggered a bit but once my vision was completely back to normal, I was fine. In a moment, Mara and the second guy flicked into the room we had been 'ported into. Mara and I took a look around at the dirty outpost, and she said "Nothing of value. Let's go." We held still and teleported back.

Mara returned to her station. Captain Diedrick spoke up once I was back, "I'll show you the combat stores. I don't want you boarding until we have another crewman to go with you, since we have two teleporter pads, but you can repel enemy boarders more effectively with armor, can't you?" The question was rhetorical, but he was already opening the lockers attached to the teleporter equipment.

I was given a tough synthetic fiber vest fitted with energy dispersing patterns of ceramic lattice, covered by ablative alloy plates designed to peel off when breached. Similar defenses, although less thick, for an undersuit and finally, armor plating that fit together almost seamlessly at the joints, for my arms and legs. Designed to stop impacts, the armor was still new, and shone beautifully with fresh paint and silent movements. An open helmet with integrated comms to complete the package.

Noticing how pleased I was looking with the new adornments, Diedrick said "You know, this is standard issue for the 'Rines. Space Marines start out with this stuff in boot camp. If you want, even better is available."

I laughed a little bit, half forced and half not. "This is fine, sir. I think I'll be able to work with this."

"Excellent! I'll get us set up for the next jump, and maybe you'll be able to try it out." He left. I continued adjusting and admiring myself on the chromed faces of the machinery. Painted with the United Federation colors Orange and Grey, I looked like a news segment hero. Like I was going to just give my report on the flawless victory over enemy forces. I hardly even noticed the jump.

Diedrick squawked over my comms, however " You're in luck, buddy. They've teleported into Shields, but they'll probably move to engines. On the double, soldier!"

"Aye aye, sir!" I tried to stop grinning as I moved. I don't want to look crazy.

But damn, it feels good to be a free, and dangerous, man on a military vessel.


	3. Chapter 3

My vision normalized after the jump, and I readied for the orders Diedrick would pass down the line once he got a fix on what was in the system. Outfitted in combat gear, I could board or repel enemy boarders, if there were any. With a repair kit sitting at my feet in the crash chair I set up on the teleporter room, I could also dash to the scene of a hull breach, damaged system, or fire and help contain the situation. I was starting to really get the hang of things in space. I've stopped notching my pistols. I still use the first two weapons I got from the first men I neutralized. I've killed enough to have options, yeah, but I don't find any appeal in a mantis ceremonial blade or a rock heavy scattercannon. Two Federation-Issue hand blasters is good enough for me. Turns out the Rebels I took these two of my favorite guns from must have killed Fed troops at some point, because the serial numbers trace back to a Space Navy Depot that's long since been decommissioned.

I've taken the liberty of upgrading them, though. Besides the notches that I have given up on tracking, a stop at a mercenary armory hidden in the shadow of a gas giant bolstered the stock blasters to silenced, tight-beam, extended magazine shredders I use now. The blasters don't really function any differently mechanically, the rear half of the top slide still slides back to load the magazine of energy cells into firing position, and the middle slide halves still bloom when firing, but the modifications I had installed suit my combat style much better. I can almost sneak aboard an enemy ship, if they cameras don't see me. Almost. A silencer can only do so much for a directed energy weapon. Still, I've had my fair share of gunfights where the reduced noise has helped me evade capture or killing.

I think I might be using them a bit much, though. I've worn the padding on the grips down, and I can tell which I'm holding by how it sits in my hand. I named them Peace and Tranquility, Peace in my left hand and Tranquility in my right. They sit in opposite holsters just in front and below my lungs, and when I cross my arms in front of my chest, I can palm them and caress them absentmindedly.

"This is a new one, Bryon. Federation signal on a planet below. I'm sending you down to check it out. For once, this one seems to be real, not like the last two traps we walked into." Diedrick finally got my orders to me.

"Aye aye, sir." I stood and positioned myself on the teleporter pad and readied myself. While Diedrick did whatever it was he did before he 'ported me, I unholstered Peace and Tranquility, but then returned them to their places. No need for guns amongst friendlies. Not that we've met any Federation friends. Some sympathizers, and a gun-runner and smuggler that identified with the Federation, but nobody that reported to Space Navy Command.

I regained very little of my sight once I was able to see again. Diedrick 'ported me somewhere dark. He's done it before. Gives me a tactical advantage. From the smell of it, I was given the element of surprise, and a janitorial closet. I found the door by turning around a couple times and looking for light streaming in under the door. When it didn't respond to a soft hand gently pushing it, I backed up, reared up, and kicked it full power to open it.

Light flooded in and I listened. The E-lock bolt block and some of the hardware that formerly secured it to the wall _PING_ed and tumbled across the floor.

And human bones clattered away from the door I opened. A skull rolled away. A dust cloud had erupted from the door being opened, and it smelled like iron and bad meat long rotten.

We were too late, by a long shot. The dusty clothes that adorned the bodies were Federation uniforms. Two other human skeletons were in the room I was in, what looked like a defensive position clearly overrun. I walked to where the first skull had flown and picked it up.

Heavy damage marred his face: unusual for modern combat. The other two bodies were missing large chunks of their anatomy, holes in the chest, and looking into one of two doors leading away, where another body slumped over a chair was completely missing it's skull. I looked at the damaged skull's body. One small hole in the ribcage but almost completely intact aside.

Facial damage that wasn't an energy weapon's telltale mark must mean he was interrogated. Likely the last one to fall. Makes sense, too. The final defender, slumped over from a deadly bolt to the gut, watching his friends die around him, must have been drilled for information and left to die of his wounds. But what were his assailants, Rebels, no doubt, looking for? I set his skull down next to his chest and took a better look into the room with the headless skeleton.

Bone chips and most of a skull plate solved the mystery of the disappearing head. But this room was just a bunk room, and before that was the door room leading into the surface. An immaculately clean kitchen attached to that provided nothing the Rebels would have wanted, judging by the orderly look, even now. I returned to the defender's last stand and took the other door open to me.

A control room with deactivated, but still powered, consoles and a strong-door with some serious locks, as well as four more bodies, all in various states of desolation: A burn mark in the shape of a zoltan, a human in Rebel colors missing an arm and multiple chest breaches, the carapace of a mantis in Federation Greys lying on top of him, and two halves on an engi, bottom still sitting in a console, the other half sprawled on the floor where it tumbled over the console and slumped against the front of the panel.

"What have you got down there, Bryon?" Diedrick's radio inquired.

"All dead, chief." I took a closer look at the strong door, there was no indicator that Rebels had breached it. "Federation cache, though. Or something. I don't know, I'll try and get through the security lock to see what's in it."

"I'll send Tomas down to help you out. He should be able to circumvent any security measures you run into."

Tomas 'ported in a few minutes later. He took a long look around the room, and settled his gaze on his fallen brother. I don't know if engi feel emotions, but the clicking and gurgling whine that betray engi thought ceased altogether for a few long moments.

"Error: Code 2j670001: words adequate not available. I, do not know what to say." The synthesized voice finally echoed solemnly. If a robot can be solemn. I just nodded. Tomas circled around to the control console and began typing at the board. He didn't make any effort to move the lower half of the body and sit. He just stood next to the chair.

After almost half an hour of working silently he intoned "Status: Successful neutralization of security countermeasures activated by Rebel forces seeking access of safe room." The heavy bolts securing the door clanged as they slid aside and hydraulics hissed, opening the door. The lights inside flickered twice and then remained on.

Inside was one skeleton, perfectly intact, with no wounds and a relatively clean uniform. There were two open weapon lockers, empty. The Rebels must have taken the weapons used by the defenders when they left, and locked the survivor in with their attempts to gain access. There was also a number of computer monitors, the Federation Signal Emitter control panel, which Tomas deactivated and began talking to Diedrick over comms. The skeleton was leaning against the back of the chair to a control panel. I stepped around him and settled into the chair to take inventory.

A last desperate message saved locally but not transmitted due to Rebel jamming identified the base, it's staff, and their untimely end. An account of how they were found (an obsolete signal encryption error, long since corrected, Tomas noted), and a final written prayer to his personal god. I saved the message and began prowling through mission statement files, trying to find some clue as to the purpose of the outpost.

Tomas Began checking other monitors and found gold before I did. He brought up a file and beamed a copy to Diedrick spaceside. This base operated as a forward operations coordination site, designed to give advancing units, when we were pushing back against the newly recognized Rebel threat, the locations and purposes of friendly bases in the area. Almost all, in fact all but one, were marked [COMPROMISED] or [SILENT]. Apparently, base communication protocol requires a weekly check-in transmission and when one goes silent, base personnel are to assume the correspondents have been destroyed.

The last base that still responded to the automated pings froze me in my tracks: It's file had a lot of technical details, but more importantly, was marked [TOP SECRET]! Federation Navy Shipyard Hephaestus Prime! Specifications indicated that this is where most supermassive ships started off! Everything from our mighty Rhinoceros Class Fleet Carriers, capable of launching hundreds of fighters to our Emperor Class Dreadnoughts, bristling with weaponry enough to destroy planets or whole fleets of enemy craft!

Hephaestus Prime hadn't responded in almost 2 years, though! There were no staff to designate it destroyed, or to even catalog the ping results coming in. Most importantly, if the Rebels have had Hephaestus Prime for 2 years, they could be constructing ships of their own that would secure dominion in the war against the dwindling Federation fleet!

"Diedrick, did you read th-" I began

"You bet your ass I did! Hold still, I'm 'porting you two back up. We've got to check it out! Maybe they've just fallen silent and we'll find a graveyard like here. But God save us if the Rebels have gotten in there and are at work."

I didn't have time to protest. We clearly had no time to lose, and there was likely nothing here worth anything anymore. Every second we spent here is one more armor plate welded to the hull of a Rebel monstrosity, every minute another turret fixed to it's emplacement, every hour is another Federation crew that will die to the fire of a Rebel Dreadnought.

We had hardly teleported aboard when the FTL drive ignited and Tomas and I were thrown against the wall and we raced off to meet the Fates at the birthplace of titans and the construction site of the bell that could ring the death knell of the Federation.

Three full jumps before Hephaestus Prime, still burning ahead at full speed, we stopped dead to multiple missile locks and tripled jamming, as well as a hacking drone attaching to the hull and silencing our engines. For a few tense moments, we stared at a few dozen major Federation ships, all with the looming threat of active weapons, and just as many engaged in refitting, rearming, and refueling operations in nearby stations and Federation tanker ships. Our crew released a collective sigh when a message came across shipboard comms:

"Well, you're not part of Fifth Fleet, but you're Federation alright. I'd ask you what you're doing here, but I need every damn ship I can get for what's coming."

"What, exactly is coming?" Diedrick inquired of him. A video feed showed a Federation Rear Admiral on the crowded bridge of an Archduke Class Frigate/Flagship.

"We're taking back Hephaestus Prime, or we'll destroy it trying. We've got to take it back, or prevent it from operating. If you have any loyalty to the Federation, you're coming with us. There's no less than a thousand Rebel ships in and around the system, and even with seven Federation fleets, three privateer fleets, and an Emperor, we're not expecting to win this one. I'd ask if you're coming, but I've got too many problems to worry about now. Follow us or not, we're chain-jumping in with the other fleets in 30 minutes. Link up with a tanker to refuel and rearm, and get battle plans. Admiral Anders out."

Diedrick called all the crew into the medbay to talk it over. We were a Federation ship, although just a small multipurpose frigate. We didn't have the guns to play with the big boys, Stick pointed out. We have larger priorities, including our continued survival, pointed out Tomas. Mara remained silent. Diedrick turned to me after Tomas had spoke his piece and looked expectantly at me.  
"Well, Bryon. You're part of this crew. What do you have to say about what we're going to do?"

I looked down at me boots, kicked out in front of me as I leaned against some medical equipment. Still in my combat armor, I had my share of scars and scratches from the battles up to this point. I'd won them all, but I had a fair shot. We've only fought when we thought we had a good chance of winning. But I couldn't imagine coming to battle against a foe with superior weaponry to the point where our best ships crumble like tissue before torrents of fire. I thought about the fight ahead. Almost guaranteed death. But to even the field, cripple the Rebel war machine, and give whoever would follow in our footsteps that fair chance, even if we wouldn't be part of the war any more than a name on a memorial.

"We're Federation soldiers. I say we follow the fleet. If the fate of the Federation hangs on this shipyard being destroyed or recaptured, then the only chance we can give our future in the galaxy is destroying or recapturing it."

I stood up straight and looked at the crew one at a time. "I don't know about you, but my future lies with the Federation. The Federation freed me as a slave. The Federation trained me as a man. And the Federation will die without it's soldiers- us- defending it." I folded my arms over my chest. "I say we follow them in and try our best to defeat whoever we can, gather the intelligence we can, and survive to tell Command about what happened. If the fleet starts losing, we'll take our losses and make a break for it. We won't die today. But they need every gun they can get firing, and that's what I think we should do."

I swallowed as an idea came to mind, but continued. "Hell, if you guys are opposed to the idea, I'll hitch a ride with one of the other ships. I've got two guns they need. I won't hold it against you. But God knows I'd like to have you with me, fighting like we have been, winning like we can be." I patted my guns and leaned back.

Diedrick looked at me with a fire in his eyes. He agreed. Mara looked at me like one would look at a child putting on his father's armor and preparing to fight a mantis death squad. Stick seemed hesitant, but he looked around and began building strength in spite of it. Tomas, without the telltale emotional signs like a face, still seemed to be tenser than normal, like we was preparing to take or give a blow.

"Alright, Bryon. I vote with you: We follow the fleet." Diedrick spoke up and looked at Mara, Stick and Tomas.

Tomas just piped "Agreed. We go."

Stick nodded, without a word.

Mara shook her head slightly, but said "Let's do it."

"Return to battle stations, we move when the fleet does!" Diedrick strode out of the room and we broke up our meeting. Before I could get out of the medbay, Mara grabbed my armored hand and spun me around. I wasn't expecting her, so I almost just kept walking but she got close and whispered to me "Hey, don't do anything stupid. There's no place for a hero where the gods of war cross swords. Only cool heads avoid a hot end." She brushed past as suddenly as she had drawn me near, and I didn't even get a look at her face.

I strapped back into my crash chair and readied for the jump that would follow. Battle plans were rattled off over the comms by some Non Commissioned Space Officer as we refuelled.

"All ships will concentrate firepower on what we believe to be the first Dreadnought the Rebels have produced. Any crew willing to board the Hephaestus Prime station itself will do so at their own risk. Enemy presence aboard expected to be very high. Enemy ground-based artillery on nearby moons should be a priority after the Dreadnought has been neutralized. Elements from fleets Fifth, Sixth, Ninth, and Privateer fleet Sword will focus on Hephaestus Prime itself. All other ships are advised to keep out of weapons range of Hephaestus Prime and engage Rebel elements that respond." The orders looped, punctuated by a time read-off. "Five minutes to jump. All ships, prepare to jump. Five minutes to jump."

I hailed Diedrick on a private channel. "Captain, I want you to land me on Hephaestus Prime Main Security Block, please."

"Do you want to die?" He sounded disillusioned.

"I want to do what needs to be done. I can do what I do best there. Put me there, please."

"Alright. Make sure you have your armor on. I'd take full BioChemNuc defense. You'll be facing everything down there."

"I know, sir. I've got everything I'll need."

"Alert! One minute to jump! All forces, prepare to engage! One minute to jump! 59! Alert! 58! Alert! 57..!"

"Good. I'll make it happen. Keep your transponder on. We'll pick you up if things get hairy."

"5!"

"4!"

"3!"

"2!"

"1!"

Admiral Ander's voice rang out over the noise of the jump "God speed!"

We jumped directly into hell. Our shields were instantly taken down by the cloud of debris left from a Rebel frigate slamming head on into a Federation Scout. Three missiles missed the hull by mere feet in the first few moments, and the sky was full of fire.

Diedrick shrilled to me "I'm moving you in close, boy, don't waste your chance! Give em hell!" were last things I heard before the teleporter slammed me away from it all.

I came to in a cell. Surrounded by prisoners of all types, in the Rebel detention block. The unmistakable sound of a teleport alerted the guards, who I could already hear responding, but they were also in a bad place. The entire universe around them had erupted into vicious combat. They likely weren't sure what to do first. I'd have a few moments to catch my breath.

I looked around at the faces that crowded the cell. a community cell, with 30 or so inmates. We were just one cell on a block, I saw. They extended as far as I could see. There must be hundreds of prisoners here. My pistols would get me out, but I could work with this.

I lowered my visor. The popping of other teleports coming in greeted my ears as well as the sound of bootfalls. A glimpse through the rows of bars and inmates turned up the occasional Marine in Federation colors who, like me, was here on the station. I raised my voice.

"Prisoners of the Rebel Conglomerate! I do not guarantee your lives, merely your freedom!" I shot the lock of the cell I was in and kicked the door open. "I do not intend to die here, or allow the Rebel Menace to jail me for the crime of refusing to bow to an oligarchy's truncheon!" The first Rebel jailor came into view, assault weapon in hand. I sighted him with both Peace and Tranquility. "If I have to kill every single Rebel here myself, I damn well will!" I landed two shots into his center of mass and put him down. I raised Tranquility and chopped towards the fallen aggressor. "But today is Judgement Day! Die free, or live a prisoner! Follow me, soldiers of the Federation!" I began to charge the way the Rebel had came, and stopped only to pick up his weapon. A bullpup rifle design, I'd rather use their ammunition before mine. As I bent to take it from him, I saw at least a dozen Marines in combat gear breaking locks behind me, and prisoners streaming out. Notably, the mantis prisoners first. Marines were also cutting manacles off their forelimbs, which serve as deadly hand-to-claw weapons. Their eyes gleamed with the bloodlust of a caged predator, and their carapaces shone with the courage of an animal with no future given, and only one presented to take through mortal combat. I turned and continued my charge.

The jailbreak was a bloodbath. Some of the luckier Rebels managed to gun down the first one, two, or maybe ten prisoners near them, but every Rebel that the newly released forces killed, another weapon was added to the growing offensive. Soon, I was overtaken by zealots who were most eager to partake of the carnage. Once I was reasonably certain the jailbreak would continue to snowball in whatever direction the mob would take, I began tagging Marines and rallying them.

"The mob will distract them, but the battle spaceside needs some help! Come on, we'll disable Hephaestus's defenses and then take the Orbital Drop Pods and move on to the anti-ship batteries on the moon below us!"

I had almost a platoon of Marines gathered when we split off from the mob and made our way to Fire Control. Every so often, running through the corridors of the massive station, another would join us after discharging a round into a Rebel body, or picking ammunition off the dead.

Rebel defenses consisted of heavy turrets mounted in large atriums between us and our objective. Overturned tables served good cover instead of lunch, and energy charges hurled over our heads solved a lot of problems as we moved forward. Rebel troops had begun to dig in, too. Sealing doors, erecting blind ambushes, and setting up killzones that in our haste, we triggered a fair number of. I stopped to catch my breath next to a panicked and suppressed Marine huddled behind the piled bodies of three Rebels and another Marine. He was whimpering to himself and shaking.

"What's your name, son?"

"Wha- what?!" He looked shocked to see me.

"What is your name, son?!" I yelled louder.

"My name- my name is-"

"If it's that hard to say, then forget it! I need you to cover my ass! Can you do that for me?" I stared at him as hard as I could and pulled an energy charge I had looted off my chest rig.

He stared from it to me, and back again. "Um- well-"

I primed it and brought myself to my knees, ducking between laser shots and hurled it as far as I could towards the nearest Rebel emplacement.

"Get up, and follow me!" Clearly, he was shell-shocked. Not worth the time I'd waste trying to get him on his feet. I burst through the Rebel lines, firing blasts of rifle shot into the belly of one man and spraying the one behind him, through him. A third rushed me with a combat knife from the side, but the boy who I had just left slammed his rifle butt across the Rebel's face before he could bring the knife to bear, and when the Rebel went down, he popper a round off into the prone assailant.

"My name is Cris, damn it! I've got your ass, sir!" The boy had stopped shaking and his eyes cut with a grim determination, sharp and deadly.

I grinned and let off another spray into the disintegrating Rebel front.

We ground to a halt twice, once at a Rebel barricade that we whittled down only to see swarmed by mantis prisoners. The entire area when we moved through was coated in a slick red mess, not quite liquid and not quite gel, and a fine red mist wafted through the air. Cris and I were working together well, he covered me as I moved, then I set up and covered him as he leapfrogged over me. I noticed that all of the Marines that had survived this long were employing a similar strategy: leaping overbound. I'd read a lot about the tactics, but the application took some learning, and that lesson cost some Marines their lives. Still, we again stopped to disable the guns firing from Hephaestus Station, and a barbaric cheer went up among the troops when a smashed processor bank silenced the enormous anti-ship cannons.

The Rebel chain of command broke some time before then, but we had cleaned out the last major pocket of resistance in Fire Control. We didn't encounter any more Rebels, alive anyway. The Orbital Drop Pod Bay showed a couple pods missing, here and there, but a lot more bloodstains and bodies, and there were plenty to go around for the two dozen or so Marines still following me. I set a target for the guidance mainframe directing all the pods, and instructed the Marines to deploy in twos with their battle-buddy. Using a map display, I showed them where they'd land, where we'd meet, and where we were going. Using the same display I did a very quick rundown of the pods operation from what I remembered of the system, having read about it in the Marine's Handbook. All the guys left nodded with grim determination.

We locked in and the jarring slam of a large mass accelerator propelling almost three tons of metal and rocket egg wrapped around about three hundred pounds of half-man, half-animal planetside hurled us from our first victory, taking Hephaestus Prime itself, towards the Rebel strongholds below.

Landing would have been a nightmare for any of the Marines that weren't prepared to kill. Dead set in the middle of a Rebel barrack block, some of us even inside them, the combat was close. I emerged from my ODP and shot a man three feet away from me. Cris' ODP came down about 20 feet away and he impaled a man on a bayonet he had on his looted rifle. ODPs landing all around us showed the same tale: unprepared Rebel troops put down mercilessly in our first wave. Cris and I teamed up with three other pairs, and moved down the street between barracks towards our rally-point, one of the massive towers that supported one of the orbital cannons.

There were three major cannons planetside, and the Rebels knew that they were what we wanted. We made a note to disappear as soon as we could in the network of urban rooftops leading up to a clearing about 50 yards in diameter centered on the tower. Looking down, we counted dozens of Rebel troops, with a heavy weapon every third man.

"Spread out along the rooftops, and we'll gun them down before they know where we are." I snuck clockwise and indicated some of the Marines to do likewise. Two more pairs had surfaced, and once we were in position, spread out along the circle, I stood up fully and began firing.

The clearing was bathed in fire, and once the Rebels who had survived the initial assault had time to get their bearings, they responded likewise. I barked at the Marines to withdraw from the rooftops and press in at ground level.

We punched through the defensive perimeter and took the tower, without losses. These Marines were the best, not by training or recognition, but by natural selection. They had survived this long, they weren't going to die on me now. I took the fire control console and began scanning for targets.

Cris was staring out one of the reinforced glass bay windows that overlooked the complex, and in the distance, the other two batteries. "How are we going to take those? They know we're here now. We can't do it with this many men."

A couple of the Marines spoke as well, expressing their concern. We were good, but the Rebels were likely to mobilize more forces to defend this place. I was checking statistics on the cannon I had at my disposal. It's fire rate, it's expected energy output, it's range of motion-

There. I help up my hand for silence and gave the console the command to lower the gun to it's lowest point. It's likely it was never designed to fire so low, so close to the ground. Any approaching Rebel forces would be in for a shock.

I checked a monitor that showed my expected target: the barrel of the second battery. I waited for them to fire another salvo, and then opened up on them.

The massive roar of the gun took us all off guard. None of us quite fell over, but all of us weren't braced properly for the thunderous shockwave that followed the discharge of ammunition designed to neutralize space ships.

Cris turned back to the window once the world stopped shaking. I looked at what I had done. The cannon was overheated, and the barrel had sheared off, but more importantly, all the windows of the control tower had be blown out, and there was fire in the tower.

"Can you hit them again? What if those fires get into the stores…" Cris intoned ominously.

"No time, there's another cannon to take down. They'll probably know what we did to the second and the third might try to fire on us first."

Sure enough, I brought the targeting around only a few seconds before the other guy did, but I was almost staring down his barrel. I fired first-

and a blinding flash started at his tower, and slowly burned outward with the violent intensity of a dying star. I had the good sense to duck and stare at the floor, but even then, I was looking through my hands and I could faintly see the outline of my bones.

Once the light faded, I checked my Marines. None had been so foolish as to stare at the blast.

"Like that, Cris?" I almost said jokingly, if I could joke about what I'd just done.

He didn't say anything. I took a closer look at where the tower had been. Buildings stopped abruptly, and fires raged at the outskirts, obstructing my view. Ash and dust were starting to spiral down from the atmosphere.

All of a sudden my comms buzzed frantically. "Whoever is planetside, good work! We saw that, even up here. Is anybody alive down there?"

"Yes, sir! I've got two squads of Marines here and we've got a planetary battery operational. Requesting targets of priority for immediate fire."

"Damn, you took one, and took out the other two? Good work! But I've got bad news. The Rebels held off their Dreadnought until now, and they're just bringing it into range. We haven't tipped our hand either, but we need you to give all you've got in support of the Emperor when she goes against whatever they're developed."

"Aye aye, sir! I'll leave a squad here to continue the assault with the cannon, relay your orders to them." I rattled off a name, one of the Marines I'll leave here, and his comms ID.

I addressed the Marines. "We've taken the cannon, but now it's time to move on to bigger and better things. I'm leaving half of you here to hold the cannon and do as much damage as you can with it, and the rest of you are coming with me. We're going to find some way back topside and we're going to try and disable the Dreadnought from the inside." I divided the men up and took my team. The cannon was pointed spaceward as we left the building, and once we were a few blocks away, it's fury flew skyward in a flash of light and the crash of military thunder.

Darkness had fallen on the moon, and Rebel forces were few and far in between as we fought to find a teleporter, or a ship, or anything that would take us skyward. Cris pointed out a shuttle bay, and I took that as our best bet.

Like the rest of the Rebel city, it was almost abandoned now, and securing a shuttle took no effort. But just before we boarded, we all took a moment to glance skyward in awe.

Two great ships, massive beyond belief, had appeared suddenly. Smaller ships impacted the hull of the behemoths without effect. They poured fire into each other's hide, seemingly endlessly, but didn't seem to flinch at the damage. We couldn't even tell which was ours and which was theirs and which was ours. They both seemed to just ponderously cross the sky, despite the raging destruction, on a collision course. The scale of destruction held us captive, and nobody said a word as the ships creeped closer and closer, until the hulls touched, and the gradually folded into each other. Whether a last-ditch effort to take a victory from defeat, or a clerical error on the minds of two pilots, the ships collided regardless. Soundlessly, the wreckage continued to twist and fuse until one great flash wiped them out of the sky. The comms raged overhead.

"All units, Emperor is down! Emperor is down! the Rebel dreadnought has been neutralized!"

"Holy shi-"

"Be advised, enemy jump signature inbound-"

"What the hell is that thing?!"

Before our eyes, a ship not unlike the two that had just met their fates materialized into existence on the fringe of the growing debris cloud.

"Oh my God, there's another…" Cris' voice trailed off.

"Looks like we have a new target, then. Take us there." I ordered the Marine who took the helm of the shuttle. We took off without a word further between us.


	4. Chapter 4

The destruction in space had continued undistributed during my work on Hephaestus Prime and the moon below it, it seemed. Shuttles are smaller and much more nimble than ships, which helped to abate the worry accumulating from all the debris going by the windows, and the knowledge of just how thin the shields are. Shuttles were never designed to fly through the collision of galaxies.

All around us the battle still raged on. We must have been too small to be much of a target, because every ship that zipped past us either seemed to be running from or chasing someone else. Even stray combat drones whose target was gone but munitions remained didn't pay much attention to us. In my experience, stray combat drones have a tendency to go berserk, and are to be treated with care, but we damn near collided with one and it didn't bat a laser-spewing eye at us.

Cris and I were sitting in the hold, along with the Marines who weren't flying the shuttle or weren't left on the planet's surface. A couple had opted out when they saw the second Dreadnought arrive. Understandably so, with gun big enough to fly the shuttle into and still have clearance all around, the decision to remain was based in common sense and not cowardice. The seven Marines in the hold with us and the two up front had known this was likely a one-way trip.

I sprawled out, laying flat on the cargo bay floor. A good reprieve from combat, just laying here. The maneuvering through space slid me this way and that across the floor, as conflicting artificial gravity fields came in (too) close proximity to the shuttle, and then left again. The increased particle count (both gravity carrier waves, but also hard radiation from dirty munitions) should be affecting the shuttle's systems, but from the sound of the machinery all around me, I'd have sworn it was running stronger than it was on the surface. Maybe the shuttles are built with some sort of barbaric bloodlust, and a love for the carnage of open space combat. How exactly this is programmed or hardwired into the shuttle is beyond me, but I bought a system upgrade from a guy who swore by the machine spirit, and he worked with computers well enough to almost have me convinced.

I looked at Cris. He appeared to be in the same state-of-mind that I was: blissfully unaware, or actively ignoring, the danger around us. Shields don't stop sound, or the slight rocking of energy waves washing over the hull after a missile detonation, or reactor meltdown, or some other warm way of somebody leaving this life. To top it off, we were flying the smallest ship likely to be found in this pitching sea of furious stars, to attack the largest and the most deadly, without any relevant weaponry to fight with.

And in a way, the knowledge we hold of the imminent end is liberating. I don't know these guys. But we are brothers, in the end. Our shared fate connects us so deeply that at the edge of my mind I want to believe that wherever I end up, be it the void of space or the brilliant luminescent afterlife some choose to believe in, that they will be there by my side. Hopefully not as we are now, coated in the sweaty grime of a life and death battle, or the macabre slick coating that started off red, but now flakes off in deep maroon flakes if you rub at it lightly. But having gone through this, and forged a place at my side and in my heart for Cris, and the men I'm sharing a knowing glance with, everything else an angry would could throw at me seems almost simple in comparison.

I don't even really know these guys. Cris could be a loyal Federation Marine, born of military parents and destined to meet a hero's fate today. Or he could be the sickest psychopath from Luna Penitentiary, escaped in the chaos that spawned the Rebellion. It doesn't seem to matter. Hindsight will tell me what the rest of the universe thinks of my brother. Medals or Manacles, I care not for the views of an uncaring existence.

I stared at Cris. He was staring at me. I wish I could have painted that moment, lying on the floor next to him. His thin face painted in the colors of struggle, but his eyes graced with the pigments of hope. Blue eyes, or maybe just brown eyes conflicting particularly with a sooty, bloody, strained face. The moment is something I've never felt before. I've seen beauty, and I've seen desolation, but never have I seen beautiful desolation, or desolate beauty. And not beauty in the consumate way, that way I se Mara, back on my ship. Not desolation, in the way I tag a body found amongst the wreckage of one we've bested, either. Something that takes from both but becomes neither.

The world around me, Cris, us, flashed.

Strange, I know this was a teleport. Every indicator that I've felt during a teleport before was present now, except that I could still see Cris in perfect detail. I suppose I've never been teleported at the same time as someone else, now that I think about it. Maybe focussing on them, or whatever comes with you, lessens the effect the teleport has on the senses. Cris looked surprised, but as our vision cleared, it became awfully apparent what had happened.

We were on a Rebel ship. They must have scanned the shuttle, read the readings on two body still alive but prone, and teleported us to triage the injuries.

But as our vision cleared, Cris and I began piecing together a horrific fate: Federation soldiers, some just regular ship's crew, but a couple of Marines, were present in the extensive cargo room we were in. Doors to a medical facility, but all of the people in this room were dead. They must be picking up every life-form they can, and saving their friends, and offing the rest. I didn't stop to count, as I got off the floor and helped Cris up, but there could have been twenty bodies in this room alone. The teleporter for this ship must be really power efficient, or they have an unusually large reactor.

This could be the Dreadnought. I looked at Cris and he nodded. He must be thinking the same thing as I. I checked the energy cell on my rifle, and told Cris to wait as I checked the rest of my gear. The Rebels must have something else to do, but when they come to check out the newest arrivals, I want to be ready. Full cells in Peace and Tranquility, and three extra to spare, plus 5 extra for my newly-aquired rifle. A name was already forming just beyond conscious thought, although I'd formally christen her later. Cris followed suit and checked his gear down, all the way to the explosives he had gotten from somewhere before he gave me a thumbs-up.

The doors still hadn't opened. so I walked around the room, looking at the dead. Pistols, close range, I noted. "What do you reckon we do now?" Cris asked.

"I dunno, I thought someone would be here, convincing us of the cause" I kneeled and closed the eyes of a young-looking spaceman. Too young. "-but nobody is here yet. Want to see if we can go find a receptionist?"

Cris nodded and we walked to the door. It didn't open like the doors on most space ships do. They usually just sense the transient by heat or sound and open automatically. Smart of them to disable that and install countermeasures, as Cris and I found trying to lever it open.

"Hm, they don't seem to be cooperating. Good thing I filled out the appropriate paperwork in triplicate." Cris took three charges off his rig and stuck them to the door along the seam. We sprinted to the other end of the room, taking no chances, and Cris discharged one shot to trigger them.

The room shook from the blast, and a few of the closer bodies jumped, but the door opened. Just behind it, two Rebel guards with small weapons stood, half shocked and half enraged. But they were Ship Security, not marines. They died without a fight.

The medical equipment in the room was empty, but as we entered, a technician yelled into a console "Oh god, they've gotten through! Send somebody to help me-"

The console cut her off by yelling orders, although not to her. "God damn it, I knew this would happen. Open some airlocks, flush them out!"

The technician started to run, but stopped when I yelled "One more step and I shoot!"

She turned around, pale as a ghost. I can only imagine what nightmare she was living now. Somewhere down a hallway outside the opposite door to where we came in, the hissing of pressure dropping was heard. She was wearing a Rebel uniform, stained with blood. But her hands were clean, and a pair of bloody gloves were lying next to a decontamination/washing station. Green eyes stared, half afraid and half angry, but I think her hair pulled into a no-nonsense bun added to the animosity more that her mood was. She looked scared, overall.

"You can try to run and I kill you, or you can refuse to help us and suffocate here alongside us, but either way you die. Take us where we want to go, and you get to live." I told her, not lowering my rifle.

She thought quickly. "Sure, I'll take you wherever you want. Just don't shoot!" She put her hands up but started walking towards the door.

"Communications, please. I'm sorry, but I didn't get your name." I asked.

She glared at me with a fear-driven sneer. "Like you give a shit."

I would have tried to look sympathetic if she hadn't turned to continue walking briskly down the hall. "Is that what your friends call you?"

"My friends are going to call me traitor if I live. And you know what they'll call me if I die. Thanks a lot." The hatred dripped off her words. She didn't sound like she was going to become hysterical and break down, though. Being stationed in the medical bay today must have either proved her, or broken those who preceded her.

"You could come with us, if you want. I'm not sure what the Federation Regulations are on Prisoners of War, but they're pretty lenient what with the war going on and all."

She spun, fire in her eyes. "How would you know, meat head? You're just a grunt. Did they tell you to say that in Basic Training?"

I snapped and slapped her in the face. Her ignorance fueled the inferno that had begun to suddenly burn in my heart and course through my blood. "I was a slave, lady. Basic training was watching my family die to slavers-in a Rebel 'protected' system. They took me right off the slave ship and offered me a life when everybody else, including the Rebels, turned their back on me." Her eyes thinned to slits and she looked incredulous. "You think I'm lying? I don't care. But I'm damn sure we don't deal with people like you guys do. We don't gun down Rebels in the hold while they're recovering from a teleport."

Her face changed. She had finished recovering from the slap and turned her face away slightly. She knew what was going on. Her eyes dropped and she muttered "Yeah, I guess whatever you guys are doing can't be that bad. We find too many prisoners you guys leave behind. Come on."

She continued walking. "Hey- sorry about that. I just- it's hard to see that kind of thing. I wasn't ready for- well, you know." I had dropped my tone and my anger had deflected from her. My bones and blood still screamed for vengeance for the dead in that hold, though. If I hadn't been acclimated to the gore, I would have lost my head, stomach, and ability to fight.

"I get it. I didn't agree with that decision… And I didn't have any choice. I replaced someone who interceded, who's now lying on the floor in there, too. This wasn't what I signed up for. Here we are."

She approached a door that refused to open. She strafed in front of where the automatic sensors should be, but the doors didn't open. I turned to look at Cris, who had been following silently. He had 2 charges left.

The woman was starting to freak out a little bit. We all felt the pressure dropping steadily, but she expected to get us into a room with air. Her fellow crew-mates must have caught on and started shunting doors to prevent our passage. I tapped her shoulder and pulled her away from the door. Cris placed the charges and I shielded her from the blast when he detonated them.

The door had opened about 10 inches. I wedged myself in the crack, opening it by bracing against one side with my back and pushing. The woman and Cris slipped in under my arms and I pulled myself through. Cris was already working communications equipment.

"Who's left out there?" I asked, settled next to the console he was working at and looking over his shoulder.

He shook his head. "Not many. We've been decimated. I'll try and raise command, but I don't know-"

Static burst for a moment before a voice cut in: "Fed frequency aboard the Dreadnought, we read you! What's your status?!" The voice sounded stressed, and I could hear warning sirens and damage klaxons screaming in the background.

"We've boarded the Dreadnought with a team of two, and await orders. We don't have an evac plan, and will need pickup if possible."

"The best I can guarantee is a teleport run. We need data. You should have a lot of important things in there that you can nab, see if there are any portable data stoage devices the Rebs left lying around. Anything you grab will be useful-" An explosion sounded, followed by the dull roar of flames. "Shit! Make sure your transponders are on, and I'll send a ship on a danger-close run once you're ready. We don't have a lot left, and the important thing is getting word of this to Federation High Command. They need to kno-"

The feed cut out. No second explosion, no sound of gunfire. Just silence.

"I'll try another."

Static once more, and for a few moments, there was nothing but static. "Federation ship, do you copy? This is a Federation Boarding Team aboard the Dreadnought."

"Yeah, we copy, FBT! We just got partial orders for a teleport run on you guys! Where are you at?" The voice sounded familiar.

"Communications suite, but we'll try and head to Engines to steal some information on the drives this thing has. That'll let the brass guess it's tonnage and possible firepower better than we can."

"We're open to suggestions if you need us to go somewhere else, though." I chimed in.

"Bryon? Is that you? Damn, I didn't think you'd still be alive. How many Marines made it with you?"

Captain Diedrick! "Just me and Cris, sir. We've got a Rebel here-" I looked at her, and she nodded. "-who's either got to defect with us or face the firing squad here. She's going to be coming with us. What're your plans with her?" She perked up and stared at me intently when I asked the captain that.

"Depends on what she wants. But right now we have better things to be doing. Get going, I'll be in teleporter range inside of ten minutes!" I turned to her and immediately noticed a panel on the wall behind her: A personal blaster for repelling boarders. She looked at me, noticed where my eyes were, and shook her head. She knew what I was looking at.

"We'll activate transponders when we're ready to jump, chief. Ten minutes and counting, over and out." Cris closed the channel and erased the codes. No need to give the Rebels our codes.

"I don't want to shoot you anymore. I may not have signed up for this, but you don't need to worry about me shooting you in the back." The woman stepped away from the panel.

"I still would like your name." I pressed her, moving towards the panel.

"Jentha. What are you-"

I slammed my armored knuckles into the glass face of the panel and pulled the blaster out barrel-first, and offered it to Jentha. "I wouldn't follow a man into fire without having a flame of my own. It's yours if you want it, I trust you." I don't actually know if she'd shoot me, but she could have tried to run. And she seemed genuinely dissatisfied with her place here. Still, her uniform says something about her.

"I don't- I can't- I mean, they're my crewmates. I couldn't- no. You keep it." She refused, pushing it away. "I'll follow you."

Cris opened the door as I had. The air we had left in the room rushed out, and there was a lot less air in the hall. Jentha took the lead again.

We stopped, breathing heavily, before the door to the engine room. Cris was out of charges. For a moment we stared at the door, but then I remembered a trick I had seen a Mantis prisoner use on Hephaestus Prime. He had smashed the console for the door, then had pried it open. I fired three rounds into the console, until it sparked, and then one on the seam of the doors. I must have hit something important, because the doors opened suddenly.

Followed by Rebel gunfire. Jentha had been standing next to me, and a round had missed her narrowly before she ducked. Cris and I stacked up across the doorway from her.

She yelled at me over the gunfire "They're shooting!"

"I know!" Cris leaned around the corner and fired a couple of shots, and I dove across the gap to Jentha.

"Want to shoot now?" I offered the blaster again.

She shook her head. "No, I can'- I mean- no. Sorry. You guys have to take care of them but I can't- "

"It's fine." I leaned in, fired a round at the table in front of the Rebel who had first started shooting. The Rebel blaster I was using didn't have enough power to punch through, but the table was thin enough that a rifle shot…

"Can you hold this? Just in case you can bring yourself to use it." I thrust the pistol at her and unslung my rifle. She took it hesitantly and I returned to the battle.

A shot clean through the table took out the Rebel there. A second firing from a position behind the engine machinery thick enough to stop even a rifle shot necessitated a new tactic.

"Cris, suppressing fire. I'll get in and get a better firing angle." Cris nodded.

I counted down from five on my fingers and threw myself in the door, while Cris opened up, yelling as he sprayed over my head. It worked, as I landed behind machinery with a good view of the room, I saw the Rebel ducking even more to avoid any stray rounds. He wasn't armored. I almost felt bad when I put a two-round burst into him. But that didn't stop me from adding a third into him and his buddy to make sure they were down.

"Clear!" Cris and Jentha moved into the room. Jentha looked away from the bodies. "Cris, can you look for any intel that we can take with us? Data storage would be best. I'll keep watch in the hall."

"Alright. We've got seven minutes left." Cris started rummaging around the room.

Two long minutes passed with no activity in the hall. The air pressure was returning, though. They must have closed the airlocks. They must be preparing a team to rush us, but unless they move in four and a half minutes-

Gunfire snapped me out of planning and forced me to dive back into the room. I took cover by the door and blind-fired my rifle out into the hall. I don't think I hit anyone, but the cursing and retreating footsteps caused them to think twice about approaching. I don't have the ammunition to blindfire anymore, if I intend to survive, though.

I listened as the bootsteps drew closer. One Rebel, emboldened by the fact that I hadn't fired on him in the hallway, tried to push into the room. I shot him down. The others stayed outside. Another tried to take cover on the side of the door opposite to me, and I got him too. All the others must be stacking up on the side of the door I was on, just on the other side of the wall.

Jentha and Cris had found something, I didn't know what, and were taking cover behind the engines. Cris poked his head over, pumped an open palm towards them, and then raised his rifle and chopped the air twice at the door. I ran over and took cover with them.

"Red-Tail radioed in the 1 minute-mark." Cris notified me.

"How long ago?"

"About a minute ago. They might have been taken out."

"I hope not."

Cris' radio sparked to life. "FBT, you there?! We're coming in, ready or not! We see the two of you on screens!"

We looked at Jentha. "Jentha, you don't have a transponder." I blurted out. It was hard to hear over the noise of the drive next to us.

"Yeah…" She sounded resigned.

I grabbed her and sandwiched her between Cris and I. Not time to explain, but the best hope was to get her teleported with us. "Wha-" She began, as the teleport kicked in. In the last seconds before we were yanked out of there, I heard a Rebel yell:

"Grenade! Get down!" And I saw a metallic piece of something fly over our heads.

But we were out of there.

I had forgotten to stare at one of my teleported comrades, so I had the 'port shock as jarringly as normal. I came to with Diedrick standing over me, grimy and signed, but smiling. He was saying something but I only caught on once my hearing came back to normal: "... but damned if you did! The Admiral left you a message before you left. I'll let you hear it. " He hit a button on the console and Admiral Anders voice addressed me. I sat up and shook off some of the disorientation.

"The Data you carry is vital to the remaining Federation fleet! You'll need supplies for your journey, so make sure to explore each sector before going on to the next. But get to the exit beacon before the pursuing Rebel fleet can catch up!"

"Whatever firefight you got into aboard the Dreadnought resulted in critical damage to their reactor. A small explosion around the engines caused a system overload just after you were teleported out. The damage can-and will- be repaired, and we don't have the firepower anymore to take out the Dreadnought, but we'll you as much time as we can! We're counting on you, soldier! Anders out!"

"So, welcome aboard, friends!" Diedrick added to the two newcomers.

Cris hadn't gotten up yet. I took a closer look at him. He was stained red. Fresh red. "Cris, are you okay?" I asked, knowing the answer.

"Diedrick, help me get Cris to the Medbay. Jentha, can you help him out? You've got some medical experience." I didn't look at her but she beat Diedrick to helping Cris up and we dragged him from the teleporter to the Medbay.

We set Cris on the table and Jentha went to work. "The grenade must have gotten him as we were leaving. I don't know- I'll get to work but this looks bad. You can't do anything to help him now, I'll let you know when I've got him in a place I can tell you about." She stopped paying attention to me completely. I walked out of the Medbay with Diedrick.

"So, you look like shit. What happened down there?" Diedrick asked.

"A lot. I'll tell you about it after I get out of armor and maybe get some sleep. How long was the battle going on?"

Diedrick nodded. "Almost two days. No wonder. Get some rest. Hopefully Cris will pull through. I'll secure the data in the ship computers so we don't lose it, but from what I've seen, this data can turn the tide. If we get it into the right hands in time."

"Yeah, if." I added as he walked out and I began removing my shinguards.


	5. Chapter 5

Cris was out of intensive care and for the most part back to normal when I woke from a restful and especially lengthy sleep. He was still in the Med-bay however. When I asked to see him over the comm, Jentha said she still had some work to do, but that he was fine. I shrugged and reported to the bridge for orders.  
Diedrick had ordered a stop inside a nebula that appeared peaceful to rest, re-arm, re-fit, and repair as best we could. "We needed to fix ourselves up before we went out there."

"Yeah, that makes sense."

He nodded. "Mara, Stick and Tomas have been rotating eight-hour shifts between sleeping, guarding the Medbay, and repair suit-work. But now that you're back on your feet, you can join them and we'll have 2-man teams to work with. I'll have you join Mara, I think she's going to be awake soon, you can shift Tomas off security and Tomas can get some sleep. I'll help Stick finish up the repairs he can before he needs to rest, and we'll take it from there. If Mara isn't awake already, you can probably find her snoozing in the bunk in Weapons. " He got up and I walked in front of him until he turned to get suited up by the airlock.

Mara hadn't woken up, but I felt bad about waking her, so I set her alarm clock to go off in five minutes and waited leaning up against the targeting console.

She hit the alarm groggily, and didn't see me, apparently, because she got out of her bunk and left the room. I followed her all the way to the head, but didn't say anything until she was almost inside.

"Hey, Mara-" The door closed.

The door opened a few moments later, and she looked startled, but not happy. "You! What were you thinking?!" She got close to me and pushed my chest lightly. "You brought a Rebel onboard! With the data you knew was vital to the Federation! She could turn on us any minute now!" Mara crossed her arms and any semblance of being tired left her.

"What was I supposed to do, leave her to die?" My pride took a hit, I was on the defensive. I made a conscious effort not to cross my arms like she did, though.

But Mara looked confused. "What do you mean, leave her to die? I thought she just defected and came over to our side. Her own people would have killed her?"

I nodded. "She thought they would. That's why I offered her to come with us. It was a chance that they kill her, or come with us and join our crew. You guys took me in just fine, didn't you?"

"You were just a slave, not a Rebel soldier! Besides, she probably just told you they would have killed her. She could have been lying!"

I shook my head. "You didn't see what they did. Jentha was the technician in their Medbay. They had an enlarged teleporter and receiving room for it. They-"

"What does that have anything to do with it? She's stil-"

"The room we were teleported into was full of dead. I didn't stop to count the bodies." My voice flared over hers but dropped again when she fell silent.

"Wh-" She began.

"They were teleporting pretty much everybody they could onboard the Dreadnought, and killing them before they could come to. Cris and I were lucky, we somehow were teleported on without being responded to."

"I still don't see how that-"

I put my hand up to quiet her. "Jentha wasn't the first technician in that Medbay. She replaced the one before her who couldn't go along with what they were doing. Her predecessor was executed in that very room."

Mara was silent.

"Besides that, the Rebels don't seem to care about their troops. They locked down the door and tried to suffocate us by opening the airlocks. Jentha could have helped us, and lived if we did, or died with us if she didn't. And if she somehow got away, she would have been killed for insubordination. "

Mara dropped her arms and looked small, but she held eye contact. "Are you serious?"

I stared back at her. "Dead serious. I owe her my life, and she could have killed me at any time. I'm here because she was done with the killing. I don't think she knew what the Rebels were really all about."

"I didn't either. I knew they were willing to use some questionable methods, but nothing this bad. We thought they stopped at torture, but not manslaughter."

"I saw it. They're doing it. I helped Jentha get away from that. " I looked down and had nothing else to say. I'm not a fearful person, but damn, the sight of that room coated in blood and bodies where they fell before the world had returned to them hit me hard. Not even given a chance. Damn.

"You okay? What happened out there? You were gone for almost two days… We didn't keep radio contact with ground forces. How- how bad was it?"

I shook my head. "Diedrick wants us guarding the Medbay. I still need to explain that we can trust Jentha to him. But if we're on guard duty, I can tell you more. There was a lot. I'll let you do what you were doing, but meet me outside the Medbay."

I turned and walked away, and after a moment the door to the head closed.

Mara hadn't met up with me before Jentha emerged from the Medbay, in surgical gear, with blood on her hands. She looked down the hall behind me, but took off her mask to talk.

"Hey soldier. Cris is doing great." She pulled off her right glove and extended her hand. "I'm sorry we didn't meet under better circumstances, Bryon. But I wanted to introduce myself formally. And…" She gripped my hand a little tighter and emotion welled up in her eyes and voice. "I wanted to thank you. I went to med school to help people out, but the Rebels didn't have me doing surgery. They had me euthanizing people. I'm a doctor, not a butcher. And you got me back into the operating room. Thank you."

"Hey, it's nothing. I hope you'll like it here, but I don't mean to spend too much time putting your talents to use." I smiled wide and warm, and she grinned.

"Want to see Cris? He'd asked about you a few times. He didn't know you and I made it out fine. I think seeing you would help him see that."

"Yeah! I'd love to. Is he conscious?"

"Sedated, heavily, but yes. I just finished my- augments."

"What?"

She stopped me with her ungloved hand. "Cris had a lot of wounds and I had to do a lot of digging, and while he was already there, I figured I'd make some upgrades. I studied cybernetics and medical augmentation in school. He said anything I could do to help him would be welcome. So, I've added quite a bit. And…" She kept walking.

Cris was sitting up on the operating table, with multiple feeds leading to various points on his body. EEG sensors, an oxygen mask, and power cables. His legs were gone below the knees. But they were replaced by sleek prosthetics. Jentha immediately reprimanded him "Cris, you shouldn't be sitting up! You're not recovered enough to even be awake, really! "

"Bryon! God, am I glad to see you! I thought you had gotten off worse than I did." He was smiling, but a bit too widely. His eyes were sluggish and slow, too. Very sedated.

"Cris, you got an upgrade! Now you're almost a real terminator."

He grinned stupidly, but was leaning back to Jentha's persuading murmuring and light pushing. "Yeah, now the Rebs won't know what to look for on sensors! Jenth says that- uhhh-hhhh….." He spaced out and his voice trailed off.

"He will produce less of a heat signature, yes. That does not make him an android. however!"

Cris looked visibly upset. "I've always wanted to be an android, like an engi. Doc says I can't though. But don't feel bad, Bryon, Jenth can get you close like me, if you… uhhh… misplace a leg or two, like me." He smiled.

"I think I'll pass, I enjoy my body just fine, thanks."

Mara had walked in behind me and caught only what I said. "Uhhh, what?"

Cris guffawed loudly and Jentha giggled. "Phrasing, Mara. It's…"

"Not what it sounds like. Yeah, sure." She looked at Cris.

"Who's this, Bryon? she's pretty though. Not near as pretty as you, Bryon, but I'd let my little brother date her. Though I'd ask Jenth to take him to Prom, first." He looked up at Jentha with big eyes. She blushed a little and looked away.

"Cris, this is Mara. Mara, this is Cris. Mara, this is Jentha, Jentha, this is Mara." I let them all shake hands, and in Cris' case, wave his limp arm as best he could.

"Welcome aboard." Mara intoned, a little bit hesitantly. She was trying though, and I appreciated it.

"Uhh, miss Mara, I've got my dog tags, and you can use my number thing to trace my ship on the 'Net. I was serving on the New Sacramento. Did she- make it?" He lost his smile.

Mara looked at her feet. "Cris Weekes, 442 Space Marine Division, assigned to Fifth Fleet aboard the New Sacramento, under the command of Colonel B. Brimhall. Reported recovered, but wounded, during the battle of Hephaestus Prime. Medical assessment pending, transferred to command of R. Diedrick, aboard the Red-Tail, due to the destruction and total loss of the New Sacramento and her crew. Total loss or capture. I'm… sorry, Cris. Diedrick has a recommendation for the Polaris Award for Duty in Defeat, for when we find the Brass, for you, and your shipmates."

Cris was quiet, but not surprised. "I see." He looked away, out into nothing, soberly.

"Cris, we can leave you for a moment, if you want." I edged into his silence.

"I'd like that, thank you. " We left the room.

Jentha, Mara and I stood in the hallway. Jentha whispered "How many?"

"New Sacramento had a full compliment of 26 and a Marine detachment of 13." Mara replied emotionlessly.

"How many ships?"

Mara didn't speak. I said simply "Too many."

"Yeah. I'm sorry." Jentha sat down on a crash-chair and sank her head in her hands. I got close to her and rubbed my hand over her shoulder blades.

"It wasn't your fault. This is the will of two groups of men that forces us to slaughter. The Federation is fighting now so my children may have peace. Sacrifice will be remembered in the birth of every child in a universe without war, when this is all over."

"I know." She sniffled, but didn't cry. I looked at Mara. She was looking intently at Jentha, but without the hate I thought she would hold.

"I'd better start getting things ready for Cris. He's going to need a neurological comatose tissue harmonizer if he's going to be walking in the next decade. I'll be in the Medbay if you need me." Jentha got up and walked back into the room. I sat where she had just been and Mara took the seat opposite me. The doors hissed closed before she spoke.

"Wow. I don't know what to say. I don't trust her like I trust you, but damn."

"Yeah, it was, something. I hope I never have to do this again. A lot of good men are dead now." Mara looked at me with pity. "I can talk about it if you want. Talking about it feels good. Like letting the pressure out of a wound."

She didn't say anything. I looked away, and remembered.

"There wasn't much, at first. My armor was clean, and I still smelled the fabric underneath the composite plates. I landed in that prison block, fresh, and ready. I've killed before, sure. The first kills were just like normal: Somebody disagreed with my existence. I had to make it clear that if we could not co-exist, I would not be put down."

"But something changes, once you've gotten past the point of ideals and clean combat. Shooting a man isn't the same as taking him in your hands, arms locked between the two of you, in a desperate struggle for survival, and all for the virtue of a chain of command. Yeah, I was stranded there, but I wasn't about to surrender. I had a mission, an objective."

"But this boy- A Rebel soldier, he couldn't have been of age. He was trying to grow a beard, but by the look of it, he wasn't growing hair everywhere on his face. He still had peach fuzz on his cheekbones. Anyway, he had dived out of a blind and tried to bayonet me. I swatted his thrust aside and tried to bring my rifle to bear on him, but he kept me from doing so in the same way I had evaded his own attack. He were locked, neither of us able to kill the other. He looked me square in the face, and he didn't look like a Rebel. He didn't look like a soldier. He looked like a kid. He must have signed up for the glory of war, and the lure of action. But in that moment, he didn't want to die. He had a whole life ahead, and he knew that if he didn't kill me, I'd kill him."

"I didn't kill him. One of the mantis prisoners did, both foreclaws through the kid's ribcage, pincering the heart. He died instantly, I think. He didn't even look down, he just fell backwards as if in slow motion. I watched his eyes: full of fear, and dread, and doubt, and regret, go dim. The mantis had moved on before he hit the ground. But I watched him land and not even bounce. I didn't need to check if he was dead, or double check with a round through him. He was splattered all over the frenzied mantis, and the floor around me. And me. I held up my hands, coated in the boy's blood. I don't know how long I stood there. When it came time, I closed my fist, and my heart, and carried on. But damn, it hurt more than death to let that boy die. And I smelled like blood. His blood. The entirety of the battle, and I suspect even when I get around to deep-cleaning my armor, I'll still smell like a life cut short. Damn this war."

I stopped. "I'm sorry, Bryon. That's not an easy thing to live through. But I'm glad you're back." She wrapped her arms around my left arm, and leaned on me. "I've seen you at work, I remember a couple of times we got boarded and you repelled the intruders. Sometimes the fights you got into lasted longer than the battle between ships, and I'd watch you fight on the security feeds. You're unstoppable, indomitable, Herculean. But you're human."

I flinched away from her touch, a little, at first. But I settled down and let my head flop sideways a little to rest on hers. Her voice is soothing, and her touch is cathartic.

"I was worried about you, because I knew how important this mission was. I was worried about you because I felt the tension you left the ship with, when the battle was starting. I worried, because I don't want to lose you. I've never told you this, but-" She swallowed, and took a deep breath. "- I really want to be with you. I wish this was wasn't going on, so you and I could pretend we're normal people. Pretend that you didn't lose your family and weren't taken as a slave, that I didn't enlist right out of school and that we didn't fly right into the middle of the biggest conflict of our natural lives."

"I don't know much about you, Bryon. But I wish you could have asked me to come over and watch a movie, and not you ask for my help putting out a fire. I wish you woke me so we could make breakfast, not to respond to incoming missile locks. I wish you were leaving for work, in an office building somewhere doing something boring, not leaving to kill men with your hands and fight for your life."

"Me too, Mara." I didn't know what more to say. There wasn't anything else to say.

"Do you-" I cut her off by squeezing her closer to me.

"I can't love you, Mara. I don't know you well enough." She froze a little at that. But I had to say it. "If things were different, we'd be talking about the weather or the economy or the thousand other little things I'll try to talk to you about to hide just how much I like being with you." I looked down at her, and she looked up slightly, just so I could see the surface of her eyes straining to look at me. "I was used to living my life with no hope of anything beyond the hull integrity of the slave-ship, and an escape from the horrors of the dreams I still have of home in the waking nightmare of being a captive. When the Red-Tail came along, you guys gave me the chance to just be human. To have dreams, and ideals, and a cause. But these conflicts demand of me, my life. Both in the sense that I am willing to give my life in the fires of war, but also in the sentinel's vigil over the night of a life of service."

"But someday, I want to sit at the head of my table, stare across a good, warm meal at my loving spouse and smile, knowing she is all I need."

She sniffled. Tears tumbled down, in small leaps, but her mouth was upturned just enough to belie hope, and longing.

"I'm not so foolish to believe that you and I will always be so enamoured with each other. But I want you to join me for that future."

"I'd like that."

"And I'm going to build that future. For you. For me. For whatever little ones the cosmos decide you and I will have, if any. I'm ready to fight for the unborn, simply for the chance that they will be thought of as an option. That means ending this stupid war."

"Yeah. Thank you, Bryon. It… means a lot to hear you… talking, like this. With me." She rubbed her face with her wrist. "So, soldier, what say you and I take the next shore leave and do something together that doesn't involve this ship?"

"Depends, what did you have in mind?" My voice was low and garnished lightly with a rumble I wasn't aware I was capable of. It sounded like a cat, but I like how it sounded.

She purred back: "I'm sure you can think of something for us to do." Her voice's suggestive tone melted as she continued "Just as long as it's with you."

She got up and made motions to walk into the MedBay. "Aye aye." I rose to follow her.

Cris was asleep, and Jentha was focussing on the machinery she was tuning. It consisted of a portable computing unit, a bundle of sensors, and a full face-mask that was padded sufficiently to allow the wearer to sleep with it on. Satisfied that things were running well, I stepped back to lean against the doorjam. Mara said "I'll check in with Diedrick. We don't need both of us here. He could probably use some help." And left.

Jentha spoke. "Excuse me, but I might have-"

"You were eavesdropping." I added a humorous tone.

"Yeah. She cares about you. A lot." Jentha wasn't even looking up. "What are you going to do in the meantime? This war might not end this month, or this year. Maybe not even this decade."

"Enjoy my shore leaves, maybe figure out if Captain Diedrick will officiate a marriage if we get far enough along. But probably just sneak off to see her as much as I can, and sometime figure out if the bunks can hold two."

"Yeah, that sounds nice. Don't tell him I said this-" She looked up and stared at Cris for a moment before continuing "-but I think Cris is something else. I know it's probably just the sedative, but that bit he said about me taking his little brother to Prom.. I don't know, I just hope he thinks highly of me. I know I see him as nothing short of a hero. And I know better than most the extent of his pain. Hell, I fixed him up. If I ever get the courage… I'll try and talk to him like Mara talked to you. Hopefully he responds as well as you did."

"I hope so. Jentha, you're a good gal. Plus you saved his life, after defecting because of a guilty conscience. Cris is going to like you just fine. Just make sure to give him a little bit of space so he can grieve. Remember, he lost everything he's known for his military tour. That's got to take it's toll."

"Yeah. And I'll be here when he needs somewhere to go, to talk. But until then, I've got to help him and keep my head clear so I can treat him properly."

"See that you do. I'm sure you want him to sweep you off your feet, and he's not going to do that sitting down."

She smiled. "I suppose not."

I stepped out and sat back on the crash couch.


	6. Chapter 6

I got a chance to sit and talk with Cris during the break between repair and maintenance shifts. Jentha had finished up fixing him up, for the most part, except sleep-session harmonics. She was working under Diedrick's supervision in the meantime, learning a bit about space-work. The rest of the crew were doing something else, sleeping, working, or relaxing like I was.

"Howdy, Bryon. How're the repairs coming along?" Cris' body hadn't accept the prosthetics yet, so he wasn't able to walk. The harmonics should be modifying his neurological system to accept the graft, but it hadn't done so yet.

"Good, we should be ready to move on. Hopefully you'll be on your feet sooner than that."

"Yeah, Jentha says I'm recovering and adapting far faster than normal, but I still feel terrible just sitting in this bed, and I don't see much difference." He flopped his currently useless legs a bit. "These still feel like dead weight, if you ask me. I'm itching to try out these augments, too! Jentha says I can't until I'm up and walking though."

"I'd been meaning to ask you, what exactly did she add besides the legs?" I sat at the end of his bed.

"The legs are the biggest part, they should function far better than what I had. Not entirely happy they were necessary, but I'm glad I have them. I'm impressed she made them so quickly, with the micromachining that went into it, but she says it's a good piece of work, as far as prosthetics go. I guess we'll see how good it is when I get up."

"But besides that, she added electrical stimulator circuits and nodes to increase muscle function, a back-up adrenaline delivery system that can be activated at will, and parallel to the body's natural system at that. Hopefully that'll give me an edge over people who just have a single circulatory system."

Cris paused before continuing, and looked around the room thoroughly before he continued: And uhh, don't tell any of the other crew about this, but Jentha added these:" He lifted his shirt to reveal 3 small metal ports and one larger one, about the size of pencils and a quarter, set to the sides of his abdominal muscles on either side. "These are for direct delivery of body substances. They can take water, refined minerals and nutrients, just about food derivative, and deliver it far more quickly than eating it would take. The big one is for combat stimulants. The adrenaline pump is great, but this thing can dispense pain killers, antibiotics, performance enhancers, anything to give me just that much more of an edge in combat."

"Wow, that's a lot! Have you tried out those things yet?"

Cris looked at them glumly. "No, I can't. The port locks are designed to interface with an armor system exclusively, to prevent this from just being a druggie's easy in. We don't have that armor system, otherwise I'd probably be hiked up on stimulants and on my feet."

"What kind of armor do we need to get you using this stuff?"

"Jentha could tell you more about it, but she said it was Federation tech to begin with. The Rebels caught it after they raided one of our R and D bases closer to the Federation Homeworld, but they only got referential files to the actual work that had started as a Black-Op science experiment. The files were enough to build prototypes, but they never worked as well as the Federation files said they should. That's as much as she said, anyway. "

"I'll look for that, the next time we take a peek at the galaxy.." My comm paged me, taking my focus for a moment. "... map and get to pick a destination."

"Do you need to take that?"

"Yeah, I'll get back to you in a sec."

I stepped into the hall and opened the channel. "Bryon, this is Diedrick. We've finished repairs and Tomas says we can be underway. We've lost a bit of time here, but we're still ahead of the Rebel Fleet's projections. Proceed to the bridge for orders."

"Aye aye."

I poked my head back into the Medbay to tell Cris "We're moving out, buddy. Orders coming down the line. " He waved me on and I left.

The whole crew was assembled on the Bridge, in full dress Greys. They looked like they had just sworn Jentha in, and she was wearing a Federation uniform, and not just the medical gear or space suit she had been using during her stay.

Diedrick addressed us once I was formed up between Mara and Stick. "We'll be getting out of this nebula and into open space in the next jump. The entire Rebel fleet is on our ass, and I'd be willing to bet that mercenaries and pirates from here to the Galactic Rim know what we carry. We don't have the computing power to analyze the data or the fleet to back it up and act on it. We're making a beeline to the Federation Navy Headquarters, the safest place in the galaxy for us, right now. Stick, you're on engines. Tomas, shields. Mara, weapons. Jentha, you'll focus on getting Cris back on his feet. Bryon, you'll be boarding. Everybody got it?"

"Aye aye, sir." We all said together.

"We jump in five, men."

A few normal jumps passed. Ships hailed us, and passed us on or instigated a battle. We were between jumps, and I was in the Medbay when Cris swung his feet off the bed and stood.

He stood for a moment, surprised, but he took a step confidently and tested his range of motion. Jentha turned from the console she was working at and stared.

"Huh, so you were right, Jentha. I felt my legs tingle and I tried flexing the toes. When they responded, I just got up like they were my actual legs." He jumped up and down, and dashed forward before he stopped and sat back on the bed. "They don't feel exactly like my legs, but it's close."

"I need to run some tests before I'd guarantee their operation in combat, but I'd say you can accompany Bryon on his next boarding mission if the tests confirm the reception."

"Want me to tell Diedrick?" I piped up.

"Yeah, sure. He'll probably want to see this himself and write up a report on it."

Diedrick was impressed. Our teleporter could work at full capacity now, and send over multiple operatives, now that we had more than me. He asked Jentha to finish her tests but once she was done, that we would move as soon as possible to put Cris through some live-fire training.

I'm eager for the opportunity, as well. Not to put Cris in danger, but to have a partner to work with. Boarding is a lot harder alone. Going in alone is dangerous because if you're incapacitated for any reason, you are as good as dead. Having a partner means they have to take down two guys, and have to be quick about it or one will recover the other. Two men adds a psychological benefit as well: both for us, as we feel more secure with two, and against them, as being able to attack multiple rooms spreads chaos and confusion.

Jentha's tests were quick. As she worked, she warned us: "Now Cris, my tests might say you check out, but there's still a chance your body rejects the prosthetics. I wouldn't push your limits just now, to be safe."

"Sure thing, Jenth. Not like I have to try much, anyway. Not with Bryon around." I was strapping his back armor on for him and patted his shoulders. He grinned back at me.

"Yeah, yeah bud. Just don't fall asleep on the job, I'd rather not have to take them all myself."

"One station and one moon and one Dreadnought was enough for you?" He feigned surprise and disbelief.

"I was over it before I even 'ported in!"

He got up and stretched. You couldn't see his new legs, they were covered by armor. All he needed was his helmet and weapons. We left Jentha in the Medbay and began arming ourselves from the lockers by the teleporter. I had stowed his gear when he came aboard, but he had no problems figuring out what's what. His weapons were recovered from Rebel fallen as well, I noted.

The armor he had was better than mine. His was designed for a sustained ground war, not just ship boarding like mine was. His armor protected him significantly more, but maybe he didn't need so much protection.

Out in space, boarding parties are limited in weaponry to ordinance that won't destroy the ship while they're on board. Anything larger than a rifle with it's beam at widest setting will tear through walls and cause hull breaches. Explosives are employed frequently, but with timers and they're meant to be left behind. With self-teleporting warheads, it's becoming a lot less common to find infantry-carried explosives.

But on the ground, anything goes, and the armor evolved accordingly. Space battles don't have such worries, so the trade-off of armor versus mobility in space tends to favor mobility. I still wish I had a little bit thicker plating, though. You can never be too armored. Even if, like Cris, you look about as big as a Rockman, and probably can't sprint for more than five meters. Not that you'd need to, in the close quarters of a ship. But if they lose their gravity, Cris isn't going to be having a lot of fun.

I holstered Peace and Tranquility and primed the firing chamber of my rifle. The name Discord was beginning to surface for it. Cris finished up his preparations, having strapped his scatter-shot pistol to his hip and primed his semi-automatic, snub nose combat rifle. A semi-automatic rifle might not be the best choice for the close-quarters battle of space, but I doubt he had a lot of time to debate in the heat of battle where he got it.

"All set here, captain." I reported over comms.

"Roger. Jumping."

For a few moments in-system we were in the dark. If Diedrick was negotiating with whatever ships might be here, we weren't aware of it. Cris and I looked at each other, shrugged, and listened for the sound of weapons fire or our shields being hit.

Diedrick's face appeared on the communication console in the teleporter room. "Pirates. They're demanding our unconditional surrender. Go for jump?"

"Bryon, go for jump."

"Cris, go for jump."

"Roger, sending you in."

I stared at Cris to try and replicate the negation effect I had felt going onto the Dreadnought. My loss of vision and feeling denoted that it wasn't what I was looking at, that negated the effects. It must have been something about the Rebel teleporter. The crew who came aboard must not be teleport-stunned, which is probably why the Rebels had guards there. Still, being suddenly teleported probably gave the Rebels an advantage.

My vision brought me an empty room, likely an unused system room, but definitely not a cargo hold. Cris came around just after I did. I got up once he was on his feet and took a position by the door. He got behind me, for a breaching maneuver.

The doors on this ship were reinforced, but the console trick I had learned on the Dreadnought worked here too. We swept through, the next room being a connecting hallway, but we could hear commands being given in the next room. Cris took the side of the door opposite me and shot the panel, and I fired into the door where the lock mechanism is. It sprang open, revealing three unprepared pirates with scatterguns.

Scatterguns are not exactly energy weapons and not exactly projectile weapons. They use small pellets of scattershot like normal projectile weapons, but they also add considerable energy to the pellets and put out diffuse, but deadly in close range, laser beams between the pellets. Had they been ready to use them, My armor would not have stopped the barrage at this range, and even Cris' would take some serious damage.

But we had the drop on them. Cris and I crossed fire, taking out the two closest to the door, and the third pirate managed to turn towards us and fire- and miss- before we put him down.

We swept the room, checked the pirates for life, and I slung my rifle over my shoulder in favor of one of the scattergun. Cris stuck with his rifle.

The room we had cleared was the ship Weapons room. Missile warheads and laser capacitors lined the walls, and a cycler for the launch tubes was busy arming another missile. Without any explosives that would damage the system without taking half the ship with it, we had to settle for destroying the console and wedging another of the scatterguns in the cycler to inhibit motion. The cycler would eject the scattergun once it detected the anomaly, but it would stop the cycle for one round.

The ship was, for the most part, easy to move through. The enemy crew must have been grouped in the Weapons room, the only one left should be at the Helm, and that's where we were headed.

Cris was keeping up just fine. I did have to wait a little bit for him, sometimes, but he was also heavily armored. I think the weight he carried was doing more against his speed than the legs.

We stopped outside the doors of the helm. We could hear the captain talking on the comm through the half-opened door. Smoke wafted through the air, and peeking through, I could see damaged consoles and a hastily patched hole in the hull.

"I don't know how much longer they'll be here. They've already killed my crew."

"Can you stall them?" The voice on the comm was unfamiliar.

"What? No! Look, you get here now or the deal's off."

"Deal's off then, good luck, pirate."

"Damn it! Damn yo-"

Cris walked into the room, making a show of force. "Now who was that, captain?"

The captain didn't even turn around. "The Rebels. Damn cowards aren't willing to jump in fast enough, so I lose my ship over this. "

Cris lowered his weapon. "We don't have any beef with you, captain. We'll just take what we need from your ship and be on our way."

"And make me mincemeat for the Rebel Fleet? Over my dead body!" The man got up and spun quickly, revealing a micro-blaster. He was aiming for Cris and must not have known I was standing behind him. He was counting on being faster than Cris, which, to his credit, he was.

Not faster than me, though.

"Diedrick, we're clear here."

"Roger, weapons just went silent. We're bring her in close to salvage."

I kept one of the scatterguns. Cris didn't agree that they could be useful, but I like how it dispatched the captain. Style stipulations aside, the results splattered across the cockpit are hard to ignore. I grabbed a second just to be sure I had a spare.

Salvaging the vessel didn't take long. We made sure to cut off communications so the Rebels couldn't use the pirate ship's location to get a further lock on us, and shut down their sensors so that they wouldn't get the direction we went when they went over this ship again.

Cris found a map on their computers that pointed subtly towards a dual-planetary system with something of interest. "It's vague, whatever it is. But It's a place of note, the logs indicate that much. We should try to get over in that direction if we have time."

Diedrick agreed, and we went about our way.

The system indicated froze my bones. I had asked Diedrick to pull up an image in the Teleporter room to show me whatever it was that we found.

It was a station identical to the slaver station I spent the beginning of my spacer career on. A different faction, judging by the colors, but pirates are often slavers on the side, and vice versa.

The knowledge of just what was going on in there: Crime, gambling, sentient trafficking, set me off. Anger, and hate welled up within me, and I wanted to fire on the station without even opening comms. But fear followed, and twinges of dread. There were people in there, porbably slaves, like I was. I got my chance at life because Diedrick and his crew didn't fire on me. It's time for me to pay it forward, and liberate the station.

"Diedrick, we're going on there. Beam us in."

"Bryon, you can't be seri-"

"I am, and I am going if I have to go alone and do what I need to do myself."

"Well, okay. We'll support you, but that station has guns on it. We'll get you in and then skirt around to the other side of the planets, to avoid any incoming fire. Makes sure you ask Cris before you drag him i-"

"I'm in, captain. Don't worry about me." Cris cut in.

"Well, okay boys. This is your choice, and I'm honoring that, but this seems stupid. Good luck."

We burst out of the vacant bunkroom Diedrick had 'ported us into and caught a couple of pirates off guard. They didn't make a move for their weapons, staring down the point-blank muzzle of a scattergun, which was a wise decision.

"Take me to your leader."

"You forgot to say please, you bugger." One of the pirates sneered.

I audibly clicked the safety of the scattergun in response. They stared at me for a moment, suddenly not so uncooperative, and gestured Cris and I to follow.

We passed a couple of slave bunk rooms, and a security room full of guards who made no motion to stop us as we proceeded. The show of force probably negotiated the ceasefire, but they still had weapons close by. Things would get messy, if somebody got antsy.

Our conscript guides brought us to a large room with an elaborate wooden desk more at home in a classy business office than a pirate station, but behind it was a man who very much belonged here. Three prosthetic fingers on his right hand, and a prosthetic arm below the left elbow, a glass eye, and scars to tell a thousand tales. A resume, or a warning, as I understood pirate culture.

"Ah, I see you've found your way to see me in my office. Thank you, men. I'm sure our guests would like some privacy." They left.

"Ah, please, take a seat. No need for such a confrontational attitude." The man, despite his pitted and scarred face, gestured us to sit in two ornately constructed metal chairs made with what looked like strips of a ship's gun barrels. Cris and I sat, but kept our guns in view.

"That's better. Now tell me, what do two armed guests bring to my station, having boarded heavily armed, but not firing?" His demeanor was very calming, and I found it hard to believe he was a mastermind behind a slave ring and pirate guild. Still, displays of dangerous and exotic weapons behind his desk belied his line of work.

"You're a slaver. I was a slave. You've got to end this now."

"Now where on Earth did you get that idea?" He looked genuinely surprised.

"I was kept on this station's sister for a couple years. I could tell you where the shitter is, and how long it takes to flush. Come clean." I tried to call his bluff. He had to be a slaver.

"Well, I'm not going to lie to you, this station is a popular layout with slavers. But this station isn't a slaver station, and the bunks you passed are filled with freemen. Some of them are here because they have no other options in their lives, yes. But not because they were press-ganged into joining us. The poverty and chaos left over by a Rebel 'liberation' don't leave many options for these men other than… well, to be blunt, crime. Mercenary work, smuggling, hitmen. But no slaves here."

I glanced at Cris. He nodded, and I agreed and nodded back. This guy seems to be telling the truth. I turned back to him. "I see. I didn't mean to intrude, but you can see why I was…"

"Oh yes, quite so. I was slave once, myself. I stole the ship I was kept on and built an empire for myself. Kudos on getting yourself out of that life."

"Thank you, sir. I hate to do this to you, barge in and ask more on top of your patience, but our ship is running from the Rebel Fleet, and we could use anything you can spare to help us get by."

He rose and stared out a bay port overlooking the system. "Yes, my intelligence network has been going dead with reports of Rebel advance. I was worried this would happen, but it appears the Rebels are attempting a coup-de-grace. While the Federation doesn't exactly agree with my business, the Rebels have threatened to destroy my station and kill all aboard it. The scouts sent here never got away to relay that message, but still, this is problematic."

"Why don't you fight for the Federation, then? The Rebels will hunt you down anyway, and if you help the Federation survive, they will look favorably on your 'business'." Cris spoke this time, with either faked or total confidence in his allusion to a bargain.

He mused for a moment, lost in thought. The star of this system was bright, and looked like it was going to eclipse the planet below the station soon. He turned, hit a button on his desk, and spoke aloud. "Jimmers, bring the armada around in front of my office. I think our new friends deserve a demonstration."

Multiple ships jumped into the system suddenly. Two frigates that outweighed our own ship, several cruisers, a carrier, and enough fighters to block out the sun.

"We have a modest force to dedicate to the cause, but we need you to do something for us first. Our best ship is dry-docked a couple of jumps from here. The problem is, it's dry-docked by the Rebels. My best men were on a… sensitive… mission when they were captured. Free them, and the ship goes straight to Federation Naval command, and our armada will stand by you when the time comes. Destroy all evidence of their capture, and make sure that the Rebels aren't able to transmit anything or get away to tell the tale. We'll follow you in, and keep the battle limited as best we can. But sending you in first sends a message: The local entrepreneurs don't support the Rebellion. I'll get in contact with our business partners and ready our systems for war. We're invested in this, if you'll open the doors for us."

"We're on it. Beam the mission brief to our ship? Otherwise, consider it done."

"Thank you. We'll see you on the other side."

Cris and I beamed back to the ship once we cleared up the situation, and Diedrick didn't ask any questions of us, having read the brief. Cris and I saluted him when he greeted us in the Teleporter room with "I don't know what you got us into, and I'll be damned if they actually help us win this war, but they have a lot to offer us. The Federation battled them for years before the war and gave up when the Rebellion broke out. Maybe this is the chance to reconcile the Federation with the tougher parts of deep space and re-establish friendly interactions. A few politicians are going to push for your court-martial, but the generals will give you a medal when this is all over. Good work."

"Thank you, sir."

"We'll chain-jump in, I hope you're ready. This doesn't sound easy."

"Aye aye, sir."

We spent a short while communicating battle strategy with the Merc fleet, and then Diedrick calculated the jump to the drydock facility and we readied ourselves for battle.

The sudder of the jump faded and Diedrick brought up longer-range scans, from outside conventional sensor range. They could technically scan us using the same techniques, but we had their location, and to find us they would have to be continually scanning areas of dark space on the other side of the beacon. We were, for a moment, undetected.

"Hey Bryon, this is something strange. Come check out these scans." I proceeded to the bridge.

He brought up scans of the dry-dock, which was mostly structure to contain the ship and not actually inhabited, and the ship itself.

"That ship looks exactly like ours." I noticed aloud.

"Yes it does." Diedrick took multiple shots as we orbited, but every one seemed to be looking in a mirror. "They must have Federation shipwrights or schematics, or this is a captured ship. Either way, we've got orders. If they're Federation crew, well, they're back in the fight."

"Yes, sir." I turned to go.

"Bryon, one other thing: Mission brief stated that rescuing the crew might be easier than your thought. The ship is equipped with specialized medical equipment. You shouldn't have to worry about the crew being killed, that isn't listed as a concern. Whatever they have is advanced enough for that not to be a problem."

"Aye aye." I turned and left.

Cris and I waited patiently for the drop, which Diedrick executed after revealing ourselves, opening up with all batteries, and buzzing the station.

"First things first, let's get to the detention center and free the crew." I whispered to Cris in whatever dark area Diedrick had teleported us into.

"Yeah. Then we can send them to the ship to prepare for take-off and we'll disable the station locks on the ship's hardware. It's probably a radar-based auto-lander carrier wave modified to transmit hibernate commands to the ship's computers."

"Uhh, sure. I'll just assume you know how to counter it."

"Yes, I do. Comes from growing up in view of a spaceport. I've hot-wired my share of shuttles in my day."

"Good. Ready?"

"Ready."

The charge Cris had set onto the door burst open the panels, and we leaned in to open up on whoever was inside.

The room was fitted with computer consoles and large technician chairs, some full and some not. All of the Rebel personnel were staring at us, but none had a weapon drawn. These guys were techie non combatants, like never even shot a gun. But they sure as hell knew how to respond properly to them. Their hands went up and they all obeyed when commanded to face the wall, hands up.

Cris held them down while I examined the consoles. Targeting systems for the station's anti-ship defenses, active LiDAR/Radar jamming executables, station-based fighter drones, but nothing involving the trapped ship.

"Where is the crew for the ship you captured?"

"We killed them when we captured the ship." Not just one of the Rebels answered.

I looked at Cris. He tapped his communicator and motioned me to radio in for orders.

"Diedrick, this is Bryon."

"Good job on those defenses, Bryon. The sky is a lot clearer now. What's up?"

"The crew is reported as dead, sir."

"Have you found bodies?"

"Well, no but-"

"Then proceed to the ship and see if you can't find them there, or get the ship anyway."

I sighed. "Aye aye, sir."

Cris and I secured the Rebel prisoners with wrist and ankle ties and left the room, after destroying the consoles as best we could.

The station was on high-alert, but we appeared to be undetected thus far. A look out a window showed our ship, alone, facing down the station, but only half the station's defenses or less were firing, and our shields soaked up the fire.

The physical defenses between us and the frigate were locked doors, which were taken pretty easily, and two Rebel guards who got the drop on us near the airlock. Cris dispatched both while I distracted them and we continued.

Once through the airlocks, it became very clear that while this ship was built with the same exterior as our own, the interior had been heavily modified. Blood smears on the walls spelled out the fate of the crew, and some were older than others. We searched the ship for survivors, but came to the doors of the Medbay without any success.

The doors opened without a sound and revealed a sight that immediately churned my stomach, but captivated me.

Rows of humanoid-sized pods containing people: A couple of humans, a mantis, a slug, and a rockman, all in different pods. The rockman's pod was larger to accommodate his bulk. All of them were perfectly preserved, and appeared to be alive. But the pods didn't look like cryogenic pods, necessarily. Around the edges of the high glass faces, I could see machinery and tubing and circuitry.

Cris poked around the closest pod's base, and around it's sides. "No on/off switch. Must be controlled somewhere else."

"Yeah." I looked around the room. Three more pods were present, but they were empty. All of the pods were full of a thick, translucent fluid that shimmered slightly, and when I squint, I can see small particles floating about inside. All of the subjects of the pods seemed to be incapacitated, or unconscious, because they didn't respond to any amount of tapping on the glass.

"There's blood here." I turned, and Cris was pointing to a smear that went around the corner of one of the pods. Following it, Cris kneeled and felt the pulse of the body the blood belonged to. "He's still got a pulse."

I grabbed a first aid kit from off the wall and pulled out bandages, but looking at the blood, I reconsidered. I took smelling salts instead, and painkillers.

"Here. These should get him awake." I passed Cris the salts and stabbed a syringe of universal anti-biotics and anesthesia into the man's arm. Cris propped him up against the side of the pod, and wafted the salts under his nose. He gasped, coughed, and spattered blood over his chin and mouth. His chest was soaked in blood.

"Hccckkkk-" More blood. "What- hhhHhh- you're not- HHhhh- you're not Rebels-"

"No, we're not. What happened here?" I asked, kneeling to face him on his level.

"Why're you -HhhhhH-ere?" He was fading, and the little color that he had was draining from his face.

"We're accompanying a mercenary fleet to recover this ship and the rest of the crew."

"Roberts, passcode Julia Julia Four Niner Three Tecept Aleph."

The men's head flopped sideways and he stopped breathing. Cris took a defibrillator unit off the wall and tried for a couple minutes to resuscitate him, but he didn't respond. Cris simply let the paddles of the unit clatter to the floor. I kicked a couple of the items laying on the floor out of spite. A roll of tape and a wrench clattered away.

"He's gone. But what did he mean by what he said?" Cris asked, still kneeling.

"I don't know. Maybe the ship's access codes? It sounded like a security code."

"Could be. I'll keep looking around."

Cris started looking around and I took a closer look at the pods. I thought I saw movement in one of the tanks for a moment, but it was just my mind playing tricks on me. Whoever was in the pods wasn't going to reveal the secrets to me.

Cris startled audibly. I turned around and he was staring at one of the formerly empty pods, but it wasn't empty now. The particles that were before floating randomly were now busy at work, swarming over hunks of meat that scarcely covered a skeleton. As we watched, however, the muscles and tendons became more and more fleshed out, and skin grew over them in layers. A spindly pair of arms pulled a merc uniform over the completed body, even as the face and above were still being finished. Once the brain was formed, high-intensity light beams played through and over the grey matter, and electric arcs passed between multiple spheres and the brain. These stopped as abruptly as they had begun, and a skullcap of bone was lowered from a cavity above and fused in place by what must have been nanomachines in the tank.

"His.. face-"

It was the face of the man who had just died.

Cris stepped back suddenly and tripped over the man's body. He toppled him over with a dull thud.

This wasn't a preservation system. It was a cloning system.

I took a closer look at the pod. Something was different. Gazing down the line of active pods didn't clue me in, but looking at the empty ones, and then back again, and noticing that the empty ones didn't have the small flashing green light that the full ones started me thinking.

I waved my finger over the light, and then my whole hand.

A synthesized voice challenged: "Identification and Passcode, please."

I looked back at Cris. He didn't move a muscle.

I turned back to the pod. "Roberts, passcode Julia Julia-"

I turned back to Cris. He whispered "four, nine, T, A"

"Four Nine Tercept Alpha"

"Incorrect."

I looked at Cris. "Tercept, Aleph. And nine is Niner."

I waved my hand and the pod asked again: "Identification and Passcode, please."

"Roberts, Julia Julia Four Niner Tercept Aleph."

"Confirmed. Releasing cloned crewman."

The fluid drained from the tank with a shallow _sssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh_ and a loud _FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFHHHHHHHHHSSSHHHHhhhhhhhh_ depressurized the tank and dried the clone. His knees hit the glass when the fluid stopped supporting him, and he sagged lower. The glass front of the pod slid up into an unseen compartment, but a small flash had ignited the clone's mind, because he stepped out of the pod on his own power.

"Thank you. I'm not surprised the Boss is finally going along with the Federation. I'll revive the others."

Cris and I were speechless. A whole crew, back from death, stood before us. Lethal, dangerous, and angry.

"But you-" Cris began, once everyone was out of their pods.

"I died. I know." The clone Roberts knelt before his own body, or his father body, or whatever, and closed his eyes. He rose again, with fury in his eyes and with clenched fist.

"The Rebels wanted the Clonebay codes. They killed me in the hopes I'd give them up before I died. It's payback time." The other members of his crew were leaving, heading to the weapons lockers.

"But you- you don't feel anything about what just happened?!" Cris demanded of him.

He turned, unphased, and just stared at Cris.

"Aren't you thinking about what just happened?!" Cris was almost hysterical.

"No more than I did when I/he awoke, in the same way. Or the he before that. Or the he before that. You learn to tune it out." Clone Roberts left, and after a moment, Cris followed, and I after him.

The station was no challenge. None of the clones even took any hits. Cris scratched his chestplate when a Rebel attacked him with a kitchen knife, but before long, we were all gathered up in the Rebel solarium room, cleaning the blood off ourselves.

The wide bay window afforded an unobstructed view of the system, and of the Red-Tail off in the distance. We had finished off the defenders of the station, so she was free to do as she pleased until the Merc fleet arrived.

I raised Diedrick on the comm. "We figured it out, chief. The medical equipment mentioned is a Clonebay. We've secured the station. No prisoners."

"Good work! We'll- wait. Hold on. Incoming FTL signatures! You guys might want to man those turrets, there's a lot. Could be the-"

A Rebel Destroyer large enough that I didn't think it had FTL capability **BOOOM**ed into the system, followed by a small fleet to match. Red-Tail was just starting to maneuver away from it when, from the other side of the system, streaked in multiple anti-ship missiles. For a moment, I thought they were aimed at the ship, but they streaked past and screamed into the Destroyer, piercing the shields and detonating on the hull. The Destroyer immediately ceased it's pursuit course and began it's own dance to avoid death, but to no avail. Almost four times as many ships as the Pirate Lord had shown off as a point of pride clipped into the system at maximum thrusters, but not FTL speeds, which explained the pre-firing. They must have jumped farther away and waited for the Rebels to show their hand. Devious, but effective. The Rebel squadrons broke up and was systematically annihilated, and from the comms I picked up, not one Rebel, except one, got out of the system. They let him go.

The Pirate Lord boarded the station, along with Diedrick, when the Rebels had been dismantled. He surveyed the situation and listened to my report impartially, but looked visibly relieved when the clones returned, reporting the ship's full restoration of functionality.

"Sorry for the subterfuge, men. I had to protect my… investments. Take a closer look at this clone."

The pirate lord stood next to Roberts. An age difference of at least thirty years, and a lot of experience in the form of scars and disfiguring injuries, but they were also the same man.

"I've had my best scientists looking for a way to unlock the potential of cloning. Of course, research speeded up considerably when the Rebellion broke out, as the Federation became distracted to the point of ignoring my… less-than-legal research. Once I unlocked it, the Rebels took notice and captured the first working prototype system that has resulted in stable clones. You fellows have effectively delivered the technology we uncovered to the Federation, as well as the entire empire yours truly, Space Pirate Roberts, can deliver. All of my allies agree and we will dedicate all of our ships to the cause."

"How did you get the model of ship that we have?" Diedrick asked.

"We have all the schematics the Federation developed. It was just a matter of… counter-liberating a few Rebel shipyards out on the fringes of known space. Take a look out the window. Every ship I have, except my flagship, originated as a Federation design. Some have been perfected, over time, but all started with your engineers."

I stared out to see. Sure enough, I could tell most of the ships were made by the Federation. Some were heavily modified, visible even on the exterior, and all painted after the Pirate Clans colours, but were nonetheless armed to the teeth.

"I suppose it's only fitting we return these ships to you, and defend the spring from which these tributaries flow. You can count us in." He extended his hand to Diedrick.

Diedrick shook with a huge smile.

I watched the ships drift by in awe.


	7. Chapter 7

We left Roberts and his fleet to take care of the station they acquired. Roberts said he could convert it to Federation use and would begin transmitting Federation frequencies to nearby Federation ships so they would know the station was friendly. (How exactly he got the transmission codes for the encryption programs the Federation used, he didn't say. But considering he was an ally now, we weren't in much of a place to argue with his methods.)

Roberts also gave us some of the prototype cloning technology test results that he had procured during his personal search for immortality. While Diedrick opted out of replacing our ship's Medbay with a Clonebay, the data would enable Federation scientists to produce similar equipment, if the politicians authorized testing to be carried out. It seems we were stockpiling more political ammunition than we had actual munitions, but winning the battle in the drawing rooms and council meetings would be as important as winning out in space if we intended to instill a lasting peace.

I got a chance to pore through the data Roberts supplied. Apparently the problem he had wasn't quick-growing the clone, but matching the brain patterns perfectly to the subject's own brain. The solution he came up with was complex and I didn't understand exactly how it worked, but the files said a lot about paired particle research and keeping clones within transmission range of the Clonebay particle integrity verification transmitter. While paired particles are supposed to be universal, Roberts' research found they have a tendency to decay and destabilize, resulting in a less-than-perfect clone. Once the clone is produced, the trackers lock onto the subject's neurological activity, but to keep the memories current, he has to stay in range or else there will be a memory gap from when the subject's patterns are lost and the clone gains consciousness. This can cause a cognitive dissonance from the parallel understandings of his existence, leading to mental instability, to say nothing of the brain damage that can stem from the brain scrambling after losing it's parent influence.

All of the science behind cloning did nothing to relieve my personal fear of being cloned, personally. I mean, I would have no problem being cloned and I continuing the rest of my life, but the transfer of consciousness scares me, and it isn't actually immortality. But then, I don't think Roberts believed it was. I think he just wanted competent lieutenants who had a higher degree of loyalty, and what better candidate than himself?

Cris asked Diedrick about the legality of cloning himself and keeping the original, himself, alive. Legally it's not any different from procreating by normal means. As long as all sentient organisms involved are treated fairly, then nothing is illegal. Otherwise, it's really just another slavery or abuse case. Before the war, there might have been some questions regarding two of the same person running around, but one clone committing a crime doesn't mean the second will get away with the rewards of that crime without the consequences. And with the war on, the Federation doesn't have the influence to keep censuses, and the Rebels haven't any desire to do so.

I noticed a trend in the systems that went by: they were getting progressively more dangerous. The Battle for Hephaestus Prime sent ripples through the galaxy, and with the Rebel fleet riding on the disturbance, we weren't the only ones fleeing their path. A run-in with a Rebel scout, a battle with a pirate frigate, those would have been uncommon before Prime. But now, it feels like we jump from one battle to the next.

It was getting progressively harder to salvage the ships we defeated. There was plenty of scrap to go around, that wasn't an issue. But we were running out of things to do with it, all of our systems were functioning at capacity, and our reactor wouldn't take any more fuel cell expansions. Our cargo holds were filling up, too. With every ship I Cris and I disabled or Diedrick silenced, we lost even more space.

So it's no surprise that when a commerce center came up on scanners, Diedrick jumped at the opportunity to stop at the stores and visit.

We jumped into the system, with Cris and I on the bridge to see the sights, when an immediate message came in: "Hello, weary travellers! Powered Weapons or Teleporters will be taken as an act of aggression, and will be punished. Please keep the peace during your stay. Thank you." The message came from where the largest station seemed to be built around a transmitting array. That station was surrounded, and connected to, five or so similarly sized stations, which were similarly connected to smaller stations, and so on. I didn't even think about counting the possible population of the network, which stretched farther than my eyes could trace, eventually giving out to the night behind them, eclipsed by the swarms of shuttles and ships that came and went.

Diedrick powered down the appropriate systems and brought us in to dock. Diedrick gave us all orders to stay sober, but to enjoy ourselves, and look for any technology or weapons we could buy and do away with the excessive scrap we found. The crew split up at a junction to different station modules offering different services. I followed Cris to the armory, first.

Cris was talking to the rockman armorer when I caught up to him. "And this system can outfit me with the best armor available?"

"Yes sir. I built the machinery from scratch, and it'll be able to install specialized suits that would take you four or five hours to get on yourself."

"What kind of armor do you have in mind for use with this system?"

"No sense in going light when you can go heavy. You humans weren't so lucky as to evolve with natural plating. Buy the system, I'll throw in two-" He took a look at me. "suits of Hammer class armor. This shit isn't standard-issue, and the Armory system is equipped to add modules that you recover."

"Does it have support for this?" Cris lifted his shirt.

The rockman's face didn't change, but his tone dropped. "I didn't think anybody knew about that kind of thing. Cover it up, you don't know who is watching." Cris did. I didn't even know rockmen were capable of whispering. "Damn, you mean business. Yeah, it will."

"I'll get in contact with my captain and see if we're interested. I'll let you know."

"Uh-huh." Cris walked out without another word and got on the comm with Diedrick. He approved it, since Cris walked back in and shook hands with the rockman. An entire room of equipment would likely cost a room of scrap. Good thing we had loads to trade. I left Cris to oversee the exchange, and wandered the station.

I found Tomas on a wing of the station that appeared to be primarily engi. The seam to the module was functional, but made up the same nanomachines that could reassemble to form an engi, if so desired. Fixtures were done in similar fashion, forming a nearly sentient wing of the station. Tomas was interfacing with them and didn't even note my presence, although I'm sure he knew of my being there. Engi can interface directly to gain code upgrades and performance enhancement protocols, much in the same way as all the other sentient species talk and pass experience down aurally. Engi do it so much more efficiently, and for them, it's free. Tomas' expirience would be valuable to the station, as the station's experience would be valuable to Tomas. No scrap required for a mutual exchange.

Stick had found a place in a zoltan enclave that I could only look into, but not enter. Two zoltan guards requested proof of citizenship, and as I had none, I just moved along. I'm sure Stick would tell me later, if I asked, why he was going in there, but I wasn't curious enough right now to try and force passage.

I passed Jentha in a local clinic. She was giving medical advice, it seemed, but the pitiful facilities wouldn't be able to treat everyone in the line that led out into the common areas. She was in the thick of it, waving a clipboard away from her face to concentrate on removing an infection. These must be refugees, from across the galaxy and battles unnamed. Most weren't fresh, but were just in need of a proper doctor. Some even had Federation uniforms, in varying degrees of neglect. I kept walking, unable to help.

I almost bumped into Diedrick walking ahead of a group of well-dressed men of various races. Businessmen, maybe. Or local politicians. Probably both, seeing where we were. Business tended to run the farther-out worlds, and in general, the farther from real authority, the more of a corporate oligarchy formed. Diedrick was dressed well in his best greys, with all the stops pulled out. I got out of his way, and saluted, and he returned the gesture and continued. I was in uniform, too, but not dress greys. Diedrick must be working out a deal with the locals, or maybe warning them of the impending Rebel threat. Either way, I watched them disappear behind doors guarded with rockmen riot police in full crowd-control gear. Probably the local center of public affairs. I continued.

I stopped to watch a rockman boxing match that was being shown publicly in front of a vista view of the station, stretching off into the void. I didn't really watch the match. I noted it, and how long it would likely take for one of the rockmen to disable the other(a few hours) if they both fought smart. The video feed cycled between that fight, and several others, including mantis warriors against rock fighters. That fight would have been interesting, but the feed was designed to advertise all of the local fight club's attractions and kept on cycling.

Mara put her arm around my waist and mine wrapped around hers, pulling me in close. I hadn't heard her approach, but I was glad she was here.

"You know, we're at a station for a rest stop. Diedrick was yammering on the comm earlier about how close we were to Federation space. I don't know if we'll make it, but if we do we'll be heroes. They'll move you to the Marines, and I'll stay on the Red-Tail for whatever happens after…" Mara sounded worried.

"Are you worried about that, or the battle ahead? Remember, we're just carrying data. I assume the Federation is going to have to destroy that Dreadnought, and they'll need every ship they can get."

"Yeah, thanks for reminding me."

I didn't speak. The fear in her voice was apparent. But I didn't know what to say to assuage her fears, and I didn't want to make it worse, so I just let the silence hang in the air. People came and went behind us, the hum of the station continuing, but there felt like a bubble of separate atmosphere around Mara and I.

Mara pulled away and took my right hand in her left. She began to walk away and I followed.

We walked for about ten minutes before she let go of my hand and sauntered into a ship supply store. Seeing her uniform, the clerk beckoned her aside and they whispered for a few minutes in hushed tones before she broke off to call Diedrick, and when he gave her an answer she returned and concluded the transaction. She returned to my side and we continued walking.

"I just bought an advanced burst laser weapon and a major reactor upgrade, and you're not even curious about them?"

"I didn't know how to ask."

She was quiet. We walked.

She stopped us at a sign for a hotel style attraction, but with a twist. Every 'room' was a small shuttle that the hub kept in orbit around the station, allowing for total privacy. Mara didn't say a word to me when she turned to go in and got a room.

We boarded the shuttle, which was fully autonomous, and looked around the cabin. Standard flight facilities, in case the override failed, but in the back was a luxurious bed and a small attached bathroom. Mara took a seat on the foot of the bed, and I flopped down on my back next to her. I stared out the nearest view port and Mara spoke.

"Are you okay? You don't really seem all there right now."

"I'm not." She was right, I felt detached all day. Separate from reality. Everything didn't seem to matter, much. An armor upgrade would mean Cris and I would have a huge new edge in combat, but I didn't care. Jentha's work would help hundreds of people, those she touched, and those she taught. Mara's enhancements would make the coming battle less risky for her, increasing the chances of having a ship to come back to. But it was all a wash, for some reason.

"What's the matter?" She fell backwards so I was looking straight into her brown eyes. I tried to not focus on them, but they were beautiful. Flecks of silvery grey like streaks of precious metals on an asteroid, framed by a strong, but currently yielding to concern, face.

"I guess I just don't know what the point of it all is. I mean, we've killed so many people and watched countless others die. Where does it end?"

"When will all life agree? When will we drop our differences and agree, without adopting one singular point-of-view?"

"What do you mean? I mean-"

She took her hand and ran two fingers down my jawline to silence my lips. "If you want to solve the problems this life has to offer us, you need to find a way to allow all forms of life to coexist without agreement, and without conflict. A new kind of peace: one not forced by armistice, or bargained for by economic might, but guaranteed by an ideological shift away from one viewpoint being more 'right' than another."

"Humans didn't learn this on Earth, before we developed FTL drives. No other species has seemed to come close, except maybe the zoltan. This isn't a change that appears to be possible."

"But maybe the question of peace is not justified by the answer, but by the seeking of it. Think about it. You don't exercise to run a mile, or lift weights, or swim laps. You exercise because at the end of the track, or workout, or lap, you've become a healthier, better person for it. So it is with peace."

I didn't have anything to say. But I felt I should say "Thank you."

"You're welcome. I can see the torment within you. If you can, please try and still your heart. I remember what you said when we last spoke, after you came back to us from Prime. You were positive, certain, unwavering. I built my confidence in the future on that- on you. Maybe it's just hormones, or loneliness, or maybe I'm as scared as I'm afraid I am- but I think I love you, Bryon."

"And you're scared, and I can still feel that." She got up off the bed and moved towards the bathroom, and disappeared behind the door. Her voice continued "I'd understand if you wanted to just sit and think. I would, if I was in your position. I've had my family to rely on up until this war started. I learned fast to keep my happiness locked inside me for when I needed it. But-"

She re-emerged from behind the door, and I sat up on the bed. Her uniform was zipped down, in the front, running down her median. Unzipped to just below her belly button, showing off her bare chest, kept inside her shirt only because her uniform was still on her shoulders.

She took careful steps around the bed where I sat to the head, purposefully turning a little more sideways than she needed to, almost giving me a look of her breasts, and flaunting her full behind. She stopped, and turned away from me.

"-But I'd like to have you now, if you'd have me." She cross her hands over her stomach on her hips and dragged them in an X across her chest, drawing her shirt halves a little closer together. She turned back to me and sat down on the bed, farther up from where she was laying previously. I turned to look at her.

"I'd understand, like I said, no matter what you do right now. I'll take a nap, until this shuttle comes back to the station. The choice is yours, Bryon. But I mean it when I say, I love you." She settled back onto the bed, and turned her head sideways from me, looking back out the window, but spread her arms and legs, opening up her chest, and the zipper.

The stars passed by the window in a brilliant dance of light, and I took a deep breath.

Mara took my hand as we walked out of the shuttle. I looked at her, and she smiled reassuringly.

Diedrick had ordered general recall- urgently. It didn't help my nerves one bit, but we were leaving soon.

We boarded our ship just as the last engineers in charge of the reactor upgrade were leaving. "This should double our capacity, at least." Mara said once they were out of earshot. We cycled the airlock and proceeded.

"Crew, come to the Medbay." Diedrick had recorded a message for us over the intercom.

Mara and I separated and walked into the Medbay. Everyone but Stick was here, and Stick followed us in under a minute.

"I've got bad news." Diedrick began. I tensed up. "We've somehow hidden from the Rebel fleet, they didn't catch us here. They jumped past us. They're already assaulting the Fleet Core of the remaining Federation Navy forces."

"It's now or never. You all have the option of staying here on the station. Anyone who is, please leave now."

Nobody moved.

"Alright then. We've got the chain-jump calculated already. Get to stations and report in when you're ready."

"Aye aye!" We all scrambled to move.

I followed Cris to the new Armory. He didn't stop to explain, but said instead "Watch what I do. The machine does everything on it's own, for the most part." I stopped and stood in the doorway, while he mounted the central raised platform.

"Computer, initiate arming sequence."

"Please remain still. Do not make any sudden movements." The computer said a couple of times, and repeated periodically throughout the sequence.

Two arms extended from the ceiling and clasped Cris' wrist. They raised his arms to about 15 degrees above horizon and two massive generators on either side of the door kicked into life with a dull whine. The sound increased in volume and pitch as it ran.

Six beefier manipulators pressurized their hydraulic lines and extended from the walls. Steam and gas hissed from joints and metal joints scraped slightly, but the machinery worked. A couple of the arms had tools on the ends, a couple had armor pieces, and a couple had graspers and pads for stabilizing. The two first armor pieces were a back and chest shell, with a back support system involving individual supportive plates arranged like vertebrae. The shell snapped together with a _CCLANGG_ and the tool arms began a combination of soldering, cutting, and adjusting fasteners to keep them together. The armor arms retracted, taking new pieces from compartments on the walls and began adding to those already held in place.

I watched as arm pieces were added to the chest, down to the mechanized hands, and hips were built down to thick boots. There was no helmet, the chest extended a visor through Cris' field of vision to connect to the chest, starting from behind his head.

Cables that had been extended with the upper-head plates and reactor-complex jettisoned the excess fluids and gasses they carried- a combination of reactor fuels, cryonic fluids to keep temperatures stable, and biological compounds to augment Cris- and detached, retracting to their homes in the walls of the machinery. One final mechanism was retracted and two melon-sized exhaust ports above and behind Cris' neck ignited, roaring at first, but evening out at a quiet scream.

The computer concluded "Arming sequence complete."

Cris turned and stepped down, not longer a man, but a machine. A machine of death. Running lights on the front of his carapace flashed, and other systems ran through a test sequence. He opened his visor, by tapping two huge armored fingers to his visor's forehead.

"Hell, it's about time." His armor's endoskeleton motive systems were almost silent, in contrast to the resounding thuds of his footfalls. Joints moved flawlessly, lying about the power contained within the motorized joints. He looked like her could tear a hole in a bulkhead and kill the ship's crew before they're run out of oxygen. A panel had opened, with flashing lights drawing attention to the weapon within.

A heavy machine-gun, too heavy to be fired from the shoulder without augmentation. Dual Belt-fed, utilizing rechargeable belts of energy-cells that operated the railguns themselves and belts of expandable metal needles for ammunition. Cris took it and it snapped into place like just another piece of the armor. It even looked like a piece of armor, down to the folding shield that fanned out and blocked incoming fire to Cris' visor.

"I hope that suit is sealed. That's not going to do well in a ship."

"It's sealed. Your turn."

I stepped up, and allowed my arms to be raised and the armor assembled around me. While it continued Cris talked "I took the liberty of ordering an extra armor set for you. The Rapier. Faster, and a little less armored. But more weapons options for you, buddy. Got a shotgun, assault rifle, and a sniper just for you. All you gotta do is pick. Meet you in the teleporter."

The doors closed behind him and in a minute the suit finished. I picked the assault rifle, which looked the most capable, and scraped the bayonet across my suit's left palm. A thin, but surprisingly deep, scratch formed on the otherwise pristine armor. I turned my attention to the rifle itself: A gauss rifle cycler, with a heavier caliber than infantry are generally issued, although this model was still lighter than what a Rockman could fire unassisted. Still, the ammunition itself pushed the limits of the weapon with longer rounds and special payloads: Magazines for explosives, tracers, kinetics, incendiaries, pellet-shot, and ball and chain combinations. The ship's computer could mix magazines to my desire, with any combination of any round, within reason. A standard long-round reached about from my elbow to mid-way up my forearm. Magazine size was 15, for normal magazines. Normally I'd worry about that magazine size, but the rifle only fired on semi-auto, and there's just about nothing that could stop the rounds that I'd encounter. Hell, I'd punch sizable holes in armor, if I encountered it.

I passed Jentha on my way, and she grinned after the initial shock of the new suit faded. She noticed the teeth.

Mara was sitting next to Cris when I walked in.

"Engines reporting in." Stick buzzed over the comm.

"Readiness=true. capacity value:100" Tomas added.

"Weapons charged and ready."

"Medbay online and fully functional."

"Boarding team, ready." I added.

"Let's do it.

Cris and I lowered our visors and stooped to fit into the teleporter. Mara got on her toes and kissed my visor, leaving a small smudge of her lips, and whispered "Good luck. I love you.", and then she ran to her post.

The jump felt like any other jump, in a way. But it felt like no other jump I'd ever had, either. Maybe it's just the suit.


	8. Chapter 8

We expected a battle immediately inside the jump, but after a couple of minutes of nothing, Diedrick reported empty space in the vicinity. My armor was a little more mobile than Cris', so I left the teleporter and walked to the bridge.

Diedrick was staring out the window to his left. I retracted my visor to get a better look at what he was staring at.

The burnt-out hulls of dozens of warships- Rebel and Federation alike, drifted derelict through the area.

"No life signatures. Not even one. There aren't any active life support fields in the area."

A Federation shuttle drifted by, it's thrusters deactivated by the virtue of the entire back half of the craft being absent.

"What happened here?" Despite my voice reaching him through my open visor, Diedrick also heard the transmitted local voice through my suit's speakers. I even sounded like a machine.

"We must be too late." Diedrick sounded resigned.

I took a closer look at the wreckage in view. A pattern began forming. Wrecks closer to the beacon had no visible alignment. Facing this way and that, they were all splayed out in every which way. But the farther into the system I looked, the farther apart the wrecks were, and were all facing away from the beacon. They appeared to be accelerating away into the system.

"Pull up system maps and route them into my helmet display." I asked Diedrick

He worked silently and didn't reply.

I looked at the map. Six planets in system orbiting a normal sized star still well in it's prime. The fifth planet was life-bearing, and was on the other side of the system from the beacon right now. I zoomed in on the planet.

Information offered was strangely scarce: Not even a population count. Strange, considering we were within three jumps of the Federation's heart. The Naval installations in the area were heavy, though. There wasn't a shipyard in the area, that would have been too hard to hide. The flux of space traffic isn't so easily hidden as to hide a main facility such as that. But there was something the Federation was defending here, and the Rebels wanted for themselves.

"Captain, look. The Rebels are penetrating deeper into the system. Take us in towards the fifth orbital body. "

"Everyone is dead, Bryon… That's it… The Federation-"

"The Federation is not dead until her soldiers give up on the job. If I'm correct, then the Federation lives on, but only if we act. There is hope if you will follow me to take it."

Diedrick didn't move at first. But he sluggishly responded. He got up from his seat and looked at me. His eyes were bleak and he seemed to be on the verge of tears.

"Hope is dead in a grave all around you. Why prolong the pain? It's time to find the nearest Rebel and turn ourselves in. This conflict has ended."

"Maybe. But if you're wrong and I'm right, the battle has just begun and we're-"

A warning indicator began going off on the console. Diedrick snapped to look at it.

"An incoming ship- heavily damaged. Rebel…" He mused, fire returning slowly. "They're returning from the fifth orbital body. I'm- sorry, Bryon. Hellfire or Damnation, I'll keep my post if you'll keep yours. I hope this isn't the end, quite yet." He pulled the comm system microphone while we accelerated, and addressed the crew: "We've got an incoming ship! All hands, all hands, incoming!"

I ran back to the teleporter. Diedrick was giving out orders to Cris when I arrived. "This first one is too damaged for me to comfortably send you over. We'll hold you until I find someone more worth your effort."

Our weapons powered up but didn't fire, at first. A minute passed, and we fired one weapon once. Another minute passed, and then we opened up and fired all weapons in two or three volleys. Diedrick addressed us again, over the comms.

"The Rebel ship has given up valuable intelligence in their last moment. They're engaging Federation Naval forces around the fifth orbital body and our boys need all the help they can get! Brace for FTL micro-jump!"

Micro Jumps were dangerous, as they weren't guaranteed the safety a Beacon would provide, but they covered distances far faster than thrusters did.

We jumped for less than a second, where normal jumps can last up to a minute. Suddenly, the peace of empty space was replaced with the dull roar of combat, and comms became a mess of static and screaming.

Diedrick's voice cut through the miasma, clean and crisp.

"All Federation ships, this is Admiral Diedrick, acting admiral of Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Ninth fleets. We're the first ship of our armada, but we number roughly a thousand ships, coming in ten minutes from deep space. Request immediate IFF codes, we'll shoot anything not transmitting the code you give us. How copy, over?"

Diedrick lied. Just our ship- but the bluff might buy the remaining ships precious time.

He opened a private channel to me. "The Rebels might or might not buy it, but I'm sending you and Cris onto the largest Rebel ship in the area- their fleet carrier. Give 'em hell!"

The world jumped in my suit I waited for vision and feeling to return.

When it did, I looked around. Cris was next to me, and the suit's optical sensor magnified the dim light where we were.

The void of space, kept out by a shield, on one side of us, and an empty fighter launch bay. The lift to move fighters from storage was lowered, allowing us a way in.

I pulled Diedrick up on the comms. "Objective?"

"Take and hold the data transmission suite. I might not have a thousand ships, but I'll activate a signal for Robert's fleet, and see if any lost Federation forces can find their way home. If you get any information on the nature of the battle, why they're here, we can use that too."

"Aye aye. Federation Boarding Team one out."

Cris dropped down the lift first. Fifteen feet and Cris and I didn't even take any damage. The sounds of the carrier around us drowned out our landing, and a technician working nearby didn't notice us until we got close enough that the catwalk underneath our feet warped due to our weight.

He was a skinny redhead kid in a dirty jumper, and he didn't recognize we were humans in suits for a moment, but the weapons in our suited hands turned his eyes the size of ration trays. Cris spoke as he was closer.

"Live or die, son?" He had modulated his voice to sound slightly colder and heavier than it was. Or maybe he just sounded normal, and I was realizing how scary we must seem to the kid?

"Shit! Live! Damn!" He continued with expletives before Cris raised a palm and he fell silent.

"We weren't here. We're heading to the Communication's suite. You want to live so badly, you'll keep quiet. Or we change course for the reactor. Do you understand?"

He nodded.

"And are you going to say anything about us being here?"

He shook his head vigorously.

"Good man. You'll tell your kids about this someday. If you keep your word. I'll tell my kids about you someday if you don't." Cris turned and left.

As we walked I privately asked him "Do you think he'll squeal?"

"Yeah. But he's going to have to visit the bathroom first. You see the look on his face?"

"Mhhh hmmmm. Good work."

"Roger that."

We tread through machinery and fighter parts for the better part of a quarter-hour before an alarm was raised. The kid had reported us, or maybe we passed a camera, or maybe they were just responding to a teleporter signal. Either way, Cris and I set up an ambush in a hallway where we both had good views down either side. Cris watched one way and I watched the other.

Cris got activity first and started firing.

Even through the suit the weapon's discharge was like the striking of a hammer, and the electric discharge of lightning. The rate of fire was not particularly high, but the impact of the rounds punched hulls right through the bulkhead doors, and the Rebels gave up on the push and left us alone.

Cris tore the exhausted energy cells where the magnetic links allowed him to do so and dumped the spent shells into a compartment set into his carapace. He got behind me and tapped my shoulder piece to indicate his readiness. We moved on.

A similar blind corner to the one we had set ourselves up in presented itself a little farther down the line. Three rebels with scatterguns leaned around the walls when I was a few feet away from them. Cris began firing at the two on the left side of the hallway, and I took the Rebel on the right.

I rammed my bayonet through him, putting full power into the thrust. He slid off the end of my barrel and didn't try to fire twice. Cris killed the first Rebel and let the second blast his chest twice before the Rebel knew the futility of his attacks. The shot just flowered out off the oblique angles of his front plating and the energy dissipated without heating the inner suit. The Rebel surrendered, and a light blow to the temple with Cris' rifle butt put him to sleep. Better than putting him down, but he would be feeling that for a few days. Assuming he had a few days left.

The Rebels gave up the idea of stopping us with armed personnel when they lost two more ambushes of men to us, in the exact same way. They resorted to sealing the bulkheads and forcing us to pry open every door in our way.

The first door we encountered that didn't open automatically, I stepped back to shoot the door when Cris prompted me to wait. He shouldered me aside and punched the door with one hand. The door didn't respond. He kicked it, and it opened. We moved on.

When the Rebels realized the doors only slowed us down, they opened the doors behind us, and tried to vent us out. Cris and I had emergency oxygen built into our suits, and while we couldn't go diving or anything that required twelve hours of air, we had three hours apiece, and would refill the moment we found some air. The Rebels must have started panicking when we didn't even respond to the lack of air. We just continued plodding on, and they eventually gave up on that idea and returned air to our section of the ship.

Truthfully, we didn't know where we were going, until we started finding directions painted on the walls in areas of the ship expected to be more active with personnel. We left the machine bay and entered abandoned cafeterias, bunks, and common rooms. Every now and then a brave (or daring, or scared) Rebel soldier would dart out of a room, look at us and reasonable assume they wouldn't be the lucky one to kill us, and run the other way from us. We didn't waste the ammunition in shooting at them as they ran.

We beat our way to the Communications Suite and opened the door. The Rebels were set on defending the equipment from us, and had dug in. While I didn't relish in killing them, I did feel bad in the fight. They didn't have a chance. Their most dangerous weapons barely had the energy to embed slugs in my armor, and they just danced off Cris'. Our weapons punched holes in everything they were hiding behind, through them, and then through a couple walls. If we were in an outer room, we would have punched one right through the hull into space, assuming the hull plating the carrier used wasn't too thick. And even then, sustained fire would break through even the Dreadnought's hull, given enough time.

Once we had ascertained the Rebels were dead, I set about working with the communication equipment to transmit to Diedrick. Cris stood guard and repelled a push when they tried to retake the room.

The encryptions weren't hard to break through, local copies of the cyphers hadn't been wiped. Diedrick had gotten almost out of range for communication for even the carrier's equipment, but was still accessible.

"Diedrick, we're in. Bypassed local security and am ready for orders aboard the carrier."

"Roger that. The Rebel fleet has pulled away from the Federation forces in the area and are regrouping to sustain a renewed assault-"

"Got it, we'll have comms open for-"

"Wait, Bryon, there's more. The Rebels are also arranging themselves in an odd formation- It's like they're expecting more forces to jump into the system, along with the dreadnought. That's the only explanation I can come with, seeing the gaps between their ships.

"Okay. We'll wreck the dreadnought then. I've got comms opened to you, we'll defend it so you can get a beacon-born message out. Then pull us out and land us on the Dreadnought."

"Is that your plan?!"

"Uhhh- yeah. Sounds like a good plan to me. Questions?"

Diedrick chuckled a little. "No- I guess not. We'll establish the uplink and I'll keep you posted."

"Out."

The transmission equipment read "Unauthorized Remote Host Permissions Request-" and I accepted. The equipment began functions that were beyond me and I focussed on supporting Cris. Not that there was much to do- The Rebels were mowed down when they tried to push and since this was a fleet carrier, there weren't any infantry supplies like grenades to flush us out. But when a little guy got an idea and almost got through Cris' killzone, I lent him a round and solved the problem.  
"Hey, they'll get some kind of idea to try and cut power to the system if we stay long. Let's play a game with 'em." Cris didn't wait for my approval before he jumped out of cover and rushed the Rebel positions. Rounds ricocheted off his mass as he ran, but they weren't prepared at all when he skip to a stop just in front of them and opened up in bursts at those who didn't keep their heads down.

"Cris, where are you going? We have to defend the transmitter!"

"What do you think I'm doing?" He stopped before a Rebel who was particularly daring-

-Or stupid. He had a mag-knife, usually used to salvage work, but would cut his armor just the same as it would cut a hull plate, and brandished it before Cris' suit. Cris laughed and set his weapon down, making two enormous fists with his hands and raising them to the man's eye level. The Rebel stared while Cris slammed his knuckles together, moving power from the shoulder musculature arrays down the arms to arc pure energy from his fists, it seemed. The pound of armor on armor and the sparking of scraping metal seemed to deter the Rebel only slightly, as he made the decision to stand his ground. Cris took the initiative and lunged forward.

The Rebel dodged his swings deftly, giving a wide berth to the arcing paths. He danced back a step with every dodge. He looked like he would use the knife if he could, but Cris was attacking with the frequency of a machine and the savagery of a man, immune to retaliation. The Rebel flipped the mag-knife in his palms to hold the blade point-down, and raised it for a poorly- thought strike. Cris took his chance.  
Just as the he was reaching the apex of his attempted swing, Cris turned his shoulder to the man and charged him. Cris picked him up off his feet and rammed him into the nearest wall. The mag-knife forgotten, he began to double over, and dropped the knife. It clattered away and deactivated. Cris stepped on the knife, flattening and breaking it. The Rebel sank and remained still. Maybe he was unconscious, or maybe he had given up the fight. Cris didn't check twice.

I opted to stay by, while Cris caused problems elsewhere. No Rebels came to contest the transmitting equipment's function. They might not have been aware of it's operation and purpose. But local communications indicated that they had trouble containing Cris.

"I can't stop him, he doesn't-"

"Don't fight him at range, he'll punch a hole in th-"

"He's closing! Watch ou-"

"He just passed me, what am I supposed t-"

"Agghhh-"

"Block off two doors, steer him toward-"

"He's not buying it! He's just opening doors!"

"Damn it!"

"What the- All hands, ignore the intruders! Scramble fighters, this is it!"

"Aye aye, condition Oscar is in effect!"

Red warning lights on the walls flashed and a klaxon sounded through the halls of the ship.

"Cris, what'd you do!"

"That wasn't me, boss. They're scrambling fighters. Something big is going on outside."

I turned to the comm equipment. "Diedrick, what's going on?"

"Damn it! Bryon, I just got a solid connection to the Federation Fleet around the core worlds, they say we're it! The forces in this system are all that's officially left, if the Dreadnought gets to them they can't stop it! We've got to find a way to bring it down!"

"Wait, is the-"

"Yes, it's here! It just jumped in! Get ready for pickup, as soon as I'm in range!"

"Aye aye!"

I sent a priority recall order to Cris. "Shit. Roger. Be back in a flash."

He skidded around a corner, no Rebels in sight on his tail.

The sounds of the carrier around us had picked up significantly- defense guns were still silent, but bay doors opening, cargo elevators moving fighters and interceptors, of torrents of fuel moving through the lines and the crackling of electrical equipment rerouting power to where it was needed. The machine was bigger, so much bigger than Cris and I. But the hum of activity is comforting, to me. The wait for Diedrick's recall was surprisingly calm, and almost boring. Cris looked around the room restlessly, trying to find something to do while we waited. He must have injected himself with something to boost combat awareness, and it must be madness sitting still, amongst so much that he could do to help the battle beyond the hull.

The equipment buzzed "Coming in hot, 10 seconds!" Cris and I stood as still as we could. Even with active effort, Cris jittered a little bit.

We landed on the Red-Tail to a scene we weren't sure we recognized: warning signs flashing on the walls, sirens screaming for the attention of the crew, smoke wafting through air filters. "Cris, do what you can here, I'll talk to Diedrick!" I took off for the bridge.

I passed through a fire just moving into an empty room from an airlock, that I didn't have the time to stop and battle. A Rebel, teleported aboard from one of the other ships, tried to block my path to the next room, but I just ran into him, stomped on some part of his body when he crumpled under me, and kept running.

Two more Rebels were on the Bridge with Diedrick. One was trying to sabotage the guidance systems, and being so close to vulnerable parts of the armor, I couldn't risk a rifle shot. Instead, I slammed the butt of my rifle into his stomach and then directly onto his back when he keeled over. He stopped moving. The second had Diedrick up against a wall and was choking him out. One blow to his spine put him down. Diedrick gasped for air and returned to his seat.

"Thanks-" He wheezed and hurried to correct our course, dodging an incoming missile in the process, but unable to dodge another. THe hull shuddered with the impact. "That's the last of the intruders, assuming you got that third guy in the hall."

"I think so."

"Good. I'm not sure if she'll take much more abuse…"

"How bad is it?"

He turned to face me and stopped working for a second. "You've got one more good jump."

"Dreadnought."

"I figured. I don't know if the message we sent out was received, but Robert's fleet should have gotten it, if it was. It'll be up to you guys to do what you can. We're pawns in this game, though, my friend."

"I'd like to think I'm more of a knight, thanks."

"Yeah, me too. Get to it, I'll buzz them and then try to steer this wreck to the planet. If nothing else, we'll eject pods and land planetside. If we're lucky, the wreck will hold and we'll fix her up enough to get back up. Maybe we'll even figure out what the fleets are doing, protecting this as the second-to-last refuge in the galaxy."

"Aye aye."

I ran back to the teleporter room. The Rebel I had run over was back on his feet and I stopped, grabbed his shoulders, and brought my knee up to his groin. He fell again and I kicked him a couple times before moving on.

Cris was battling the blaze that had now formed, with two fire extinguishers in hand. He also had a tank of suppressant under one arm, and instead of fuddling with the valve, he had just sheared it off and it was dumping its contents over the flames in spurts as he shook the liquid out.

"Cris, we've got to go!"

"I've almost got it in here-"

"Now, Cris! There isn't a second chance!"

He let the tank drop, and shifted his grip on the extinguishers. He beat them together, one as a hammer and one as an anvil, and broke both open with a _**BANG! **_He left the tank where it was, dribbling out onto the floor, but the amount of fire fighting particulates in the air alone was combatting the blaze. We went back to the teleporter.

The ship shook under a blast and I looked at Cris. The lights flickered and somewhere, air rushed out of a hole in the ship's hull. His visor revealed nothing, but he must be dying, waiting for something to happen.

"Hope you're ready!" Diedrick yelled, and we were thrown off the ship.

Cris' form crystallized out of the darkness of a jump and I came to my senses. I was on my back, looking up at him. Cris lowered his hand and I took it.

We were in a munitions room, storage for missile warheads and bomb material. The doors were reinforced, but the panel responded to vocal commands to open the door.

The door open, I began to move. Cris stopped me. "Wait, let's do this first-" I turned to look.

Cris had taken a radio receiver spare that would respond to his suit's signal and jury-rigged it to one of the weapons. Normally meant to remote-detonate explosives, it would turn this storage room into plan B. The grim undertones to his voice when he explained "If we don't find a better plan- well, this will do something." made me shudder and I steered my mind away from the 'what-ifs' of Plan B.

Once set, Cris moved a couple warheads to hide the modified apparatus and closed the door behind us when he was finished. Then, he sauntered off, down the hall, and I followed him.

We appeared to be on an offshoot of the dreadnought, because as we passed maps on the walls of the ship, we found that we were near a weapons cluster that jutted off the bottom of the hulking mass. There weren't any bunkrooms here, the crew slept somewhere closer to the center of the ship. The long halls stretched far off, in comparison of normal ships, and we ambled on, without a clue where we wanted to go. The ship's maps were holo-projections, but they didn't mark any targets of interest for us. They just showed us where we were. But the room Cris thought was fire-control for the weapons cluster seemed clear, so that's the direction he headed.

Without warning, the whole ship began to vibrate, the sensation passing through my suit, rattling all the way up to my teeth. What had started as a dull hum became a roar, culminating in a permeating _**bbbBBBBBWWOOOONNNNGGGGG**_ that echoed in ringing after it had gone. Or maybe my ears just rung from the transmitted shock wave? Cris turned around and I turned my hands palms-up.

"The hell was that, do you think?" he asked.

"No idea. Some kind of super weapon? Let's find it."

We continued. The phenomenon repeated itself once before we reached the doors labelled 'Fire Control'. The doors weren't on lockdown, they opened as we neared.

Rebels at computers around the large room didn't look up to see us. One officer, the only one in the room who was not at a battle station, was looking away from us.

He was looking out the huge windows overlooking the battle.

Looking down the barrel of the largest beam weapon I had ever seen.

"Found it." Cris chimed in.


	9. Chapter 9

The officer turned, but didn't even take his hands from behind his back. The Rebels who were working one-by-one looked up and stared at us. I retracted my visor.

"Everyone stop what you're doing. We'll let you all go back to your bunk rooms, or the lifeboats, but you're not keeping these guns firing."

The officer glanced at my weapon, and gestured at his men. "Any of you who wish to leave their post may do so now. I won't hold it against you."

A few Rebels got up and left through the door we came in through. His hand returned to behind his back.

"Now, what are you going to do with the rest of us?"

"You're going to turn the guns on your own ships. Or sabotage them so they won't fire at ours. Your choice."

"You would have us kill our friends?" The officer's tone suggested disbelief but his face remained unchanged.

"Wouldn't you, in my place?"

"I- guess not. There is no moral high ground in this war."

"I learned that when I watched my friends gunned down when they couldn't fight back. There's no moral high ground, but when the blood soaks the floor, it's easy to see there are moral low grounds."

Rebels were working at terminals, shutting things down and guns lost their function. The officer didn't respond. Rebels began leaving as they finished, and soon it was just Cris, the officer and I.

With his crew gone, the formality left the officer. His shoulders drooped and he thrust his hands in the pocket of his dress slacks. He leaned against a nearby console and turned to stare back out the windows.

"Yeah, I know. There aren't any moral justifications to what we're both doing here. I appreciate that you didn't just gun down my boys. They might be signed on with the wrong people, but they deserve a chance."

"You don't believe in the cause here?" Cris began checking terminals and I stood next to the officer.

He snorted. "Of course not. I was Federation before I joined. And by joined, I mean, I was pressganged. I know what the Rebels do to those who refuse to listen. Their way of securing agreements might not be pleasant, but you have to admit it's effective."

I stared at the scene before us. Rebel ships were just contacting the Federation forces, which were not looking too good. A few wrecks were already out of action, probably disabled by the weapon projecting from the Dreadnought that was now silent. "Why didn't you defect?"

He spoke quietly. "I didn't think the Federation would survive this war. I'm not so sure anymore, but Hephaestus Prime was… pretty convincing. And it's not like I'll be getting as much pay by going back to a mining foreman."

"You aren't Federation Military?"

He shook his head. "I was civilian. I was well in what was then Federation territory, though. I voted, volunteered, payed full taxes, did everything a citizen should do. I didn't even think our political system was that bad. But the Rebels swept through my home as one of the first systems they 'liberated'. The directives suggested those who enlisted would be rewarded, and those who didn't would be punished. I figured that since my life wasn't going to improve just by staying, why not?"

"Any family back there?"

"I haven't heard from them."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

"I expected as much. Maybe they're still around. Doesn't matter, here." He swept across the panorama of death with an open hand.

I stepped in between him and the window, interposing myself between him and the world beyond. "It still matters. The senseless conflict continues because we have something to fight for. The Rebels want to discourage us by making life meaningless-"

"Philosophy aside, I can guarantee that there isn't anything you can do further. We disabled the frigate that dropped you off, and there's no way my boys aren't sealing the ship to prevent you from going further. Yeah, you might be able to take down one of the many redundant systems, but they'll win or lose before you can do anything. Your part in this war is over."

Cris stood still and looked at me, not convinced of this man's loyalties. I spoke on anyway.

"Well, we've got an idea. But you're in with us if you wish, or you can leave and rejoin your crew. I can't guarantee your safety if you stay with us."

He mulled over it. He stared, not out the window, but out of this world.

"We understand if you'd rather stay- I mean, you can walk away, return to them, with the best chance to survive this. The largest ship in the Rebel fleet-"

"I know. I'm not questioning that. I'm debating on whether I care enough about living to ignore the ethics behind survival."

"I'll leave you to it. Talk to me when you know."

I started to walk away and was going to help Cris with whatever he had found to do when the officer said "No, it's an easy choice. I'll stay with you. My name is Dean, by the way. What'd you have in mind?"

"I'm Bryon. This is Cris." I extended my hand and shook Dean's, dwarfed by the metal gauntlet I wore.

I nodded to Cris. He send a signal within his suit to the receiver. There was a dull _THUD _that hardly shook our feet, and power went out. Emergency Power lights flicked on, but most of the consoles remained deactivated. E-power wasn't meant to run the systems, just to get crew out with light and life support.

"That did a number on them." Cris noted.

Dean shook his head. "I know what you just did, but you didn't affect the whole ship. Interestingly, though-" He pointed back out the window. I turned to look.

The immediate sections of the ship weren't moving, but the main bulk of the Dreadnought seemed to be flying away from us. I walked to get closer to the window, and looked down: We were above the planet. And falling.

"-you've separated us from the Dreadnought. Congratulations. You've just disabled about 65 percent of this ship's offensive capability."

We watched as the gap between us and the main body widened. Rebel ships, unsure of the direction of attack on the capital ship, rushed by us, unable to help.

Static began blaring through our suit communicators: Cris muted his and I put my comms on speaker so Dean could listen in.

"_**CcckkkCkkhhhCkksffffffkk- **_All- _**KKKKKkkkkkcccc **_-All Federation ships, this is Privateer Roberts, jumping in-system to respond to you emergency call. Ships broadcasting Federation IFF Code Lima Charlie are friendly. Do not fire on ships broadcasting code Lima Charlie, over. Stand by for roll call."

Robert's flagship warped into the system, ahead and maneuvered in front of the hurting Federation ships.

"This is Privateer Roberts IV, commanding Strike Element Tortoise. Go for heavy bombardment targets." One of Roberts' clones, I assumed. His ships jumping in after him appeared to be fighter-bombers equipped with exterior payload to carry extra ordinance.

"This is Privateer Higsby, commanding Strike Team Hare. Go for boarding targets." Infantry carriers followed this pirate's capital ship, equipped with little offensive weaponry, but significant shielding and armor, and presumably mass teleporter arrays.

The view brightened suddenly with blue streaks of lightning, and the massive curving dome of the Dreadnought's shields flashed below us. For a moment, the falling sensation ceased, and we must have been sitting on the shields- but only for a moment. Dean whistled, and said "And you've gotten the shields. This wreck must be overloading their capacity. It'll be a few minutes before they come back up."

The comms continued. Roberts' voice came through- "All units, be advised, the Dreadnought's shield's are down. Engage at your own risk, but don't leave the Federation ships unprotected. Tortoise Element, keep the blockade cruisers in place, don't lose the beachhead in-system. We still have more coming in."

The shields broken, we were falling in darkness again. Now, all three of us were against the window, looking at the battle above us. A trail of vapors and debris marked our path from the Dreadnought. Already, small fighters were swarming the ship.

"Federation ships, this is Admiral Anders, Fifth fleet jumping in-system."

Anders! So he and enough of Fifth to be called Fifth survived!

A different voice buzzed in after him. "This is Admiral Stokes, and Sixth Fleet."

And another. "Admiral Gaskins, Seventh Fleet. "

"Admiral Hutchings, Ninth Fleet."

The wreckage around us began to rattle and pieces of larger debris flew past us. The upper reaches of the atmosphere were starting to increase the temperature. We were accelerating onto the day side of the planet, and the star came out and we lost sight of the battle above us. But one ship stood out-

The Red-Tail, lit like we were, burning in the atmosphere as it fell. Still in once piece, but hurting bad. As I watched, two life-boat pods jetted away from it. Two is enough for the entire crew, but that's only if they all got into the pod in time.

"Are there any lifeboats on this piece of the wreck? I asked Dean.

Dean nodded. He got up from the window and ran to the door. I followed him. We were getting low… Maybe too low.

Cris was behind me, when the bay windows shattered. The remaining atmosphere threatened to suck him out of the wreck, and he wasn't going to be moving. Dean and I were already out the door, and the sudden loss of pressure would have thrown us out completely if I hadn't put my arms out and locked us down. Dean slammed into me, but he got enough of a grip that he didn't slip past.

"Go! I'll see you down there!" Cris yelled over comms. And with that, he hit the pad to close the door, re-sealing the air for Dean. We continued running down the hall.

The first pod fit Dean easily and I not so much, so I grabbed the next one after. Even with just me, the pod meant for three was cramped. Dean's took off with a whisper compared to the noise rising around us, and I hit the button on mine that slammed me to the upside-down chair. These pods were meant to tumble in the atmosphere, but mine only flipped a couple of times before everything went dark.

The first thing I saw was a shadow. Light began to fill in around the shadow. I stared at it, and details began filling in: Two large, feline eyes, a black nose, orange and grey patterning across the face, ears not quite erect, not quite held back- a cat of some kind. But as I watched, the cat's shoulders and neck fleshed out, and paws set to work pushing metal away from me so I could move.

"Who are you- no, what are you?" I asked, once I was reasonably certain I wasn't hallucinating.

A deep rumbling preceded the words, which were quick but refined: "I am called Konnzt, and my people are the Bastetses, commonly known as cats."

His voice was clear to me, he had studied language, and the only accent I could pin was an Old Earth Refined Hispanic/Luna Proper Hispanese.

"Why- why have I not seen one of the Bastetses before?"

He rumbled "We take pride in our stealth, and the ability to hide. Intergalactic policy is no different. We watched, as-" He rumbled the closest thing to a grunt as he dragged a heavy piece away, and I began moving myself, sifting through the rubble. "-as the- ahhhh- the galactic community did nothing to protect newer species from the rage, terror, and greed of the older. So we kept our presence a secret. This, where you landed, is our largest colony. We have long kept it a secret, and preserved it to appear untouched. This is also our largest military base."

I sighed. "Oh, good, so we'll be able to find some help? You know I'm Federation."

He paused, but I continued moving. "The thing is- well, the Rebellion was instigated by members of my race. We don't agree, as a general whole, but this base is technically friendly to the Rebels…"

I stopped and stared.

He continued: "But, this is also the seat of power of these usurpers, and if we can kill enough of them to sever the head, the Rebellion will lose energy and fizzle out."

I focussed on freeing myself, and once clear of the rubble, I stood and took a better look at Konnzt. About five feet tall, but very well built muscle, from what showed. Though for his sculpting, he was comparatively thin. Lean, worked to remain strong, but small. He wore a black combat vest and black cargo pants. Several bladed weapons were strapped to his body.

"How do I know you're not misleading me?"

Konnzt didn't seem offended. "I could have killed you before you woke. I could have ignored your pod. I could have done anything else to hurt you, and I did not. What use is there in distrust now?"

"I don't exactly trust or distrust you right now. I'll think about it. But first things first, I need to find my comrades."

"Ah, the other pod. There were two of you in there?"

"No- just one. But one of us was in the wreckage that the pods left from. The other is in the pod. We need to find both."

His eyes narrowed and he looked away. "I do not think one could survive in the wreckage. But see the plumes they left in the sky."

He pointed, and I saw two distinct plumes: one small, thin, white plume, and a significantly larger, black smoke plume. The smaller was much closer than the larger.

I pointed to the white plume. "There. Let's go there."

He looked at the plume, and traced it up into the sky. Even in the morning- or was it afternoon?- light, flecks of fire were beginning to streak across the sky. He spoke: "Things are changing. The world is different than it normally is. There is much to do, much to consider."

"No time to think, Konntz."

He halted my first step with a paw on my chest. "We go to war. It would be unwise to proceed without preparation." He bent, and handed me my rifle. I would have left without it.

"I suppose you're right."

"We have choices to make, uhhh…-"

"Bryon."

"We must choose between many paths, Bryon. First, we'll find your friend. Then we must choose how we will do what must be done."

"Let's get to that bridge before we cross it."

I began walking. He walked easily beside me, on the trail in the forest around us. As we walked, he and I talked.

"I have never liked bridges."

"Your people must not be fond of water."

"No, we're not"...

The flecks of fire continued their path across the sky, and if I squinted, I could glimpse the battle above us, in fits and bursts. Maybe it'll be easier to see tonight.

FIN


	10. Author's Note

It's finished, folks. Maybe with some coaxing, or maybe some extrusion, I've written this as best I could.

**You said a lot of things that aren't FTL canon! **

I did. And I take none of it back.

**You didn't end this as the game is supposed to end!(Either in a fiery defeat of the victory of the Federation in the destruction of the Flagship.)**

You got me, I didn't.

**This isn't how the game is supposed to go(armored infantry?! That's not in the game!) and it's not how the game is supposed to run(longer encounters than we know of, chain-jumps, the fleet passing you and not finding you?!) **

True, and true.

**Why?!**

_I never intended to make this as an exact FTL: Faster than Light copy, nor did I assume anything in FTL necessarily precludes me from taking creative licence. This is the basis for the motive of this work: __**This work is intended to be the bridge between FTL:Faster Than Light, and a sequel game. No, I haven't made this game. No, I don't plan to. I can't code well enough to do so. But I hope some day somebody comes up with the coding skills and asks me to help write for the game. **_

I have plenty of ideas for the game. I know exactly how I want it to work, and how things should go. I want desperately for it to be. But I am a writer, not a coder. I cannot so do. If you want to talk to me about the game, PM me on FF, or send me an email at austin_the_random . If you want to make the game, kudos. I hope you can code and that you like my ideas.

**But Austin! Did Cris live or die?! What happened to the fleets above the planet?! Who is this mysterious new race, and what do they want?!**

Why don't you make the game with me and find out?

Thank you, by the way. This story was fulfilling to me, and I enjoyed writing it. I half-assed a lot of it, I'm not going to lie. And if you half-like it, that's fine with me. But if you more than half-like it, feel free to comment or send me a message and talk about it.

The Author

Austin


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